Toshiba Canvio Basics 2TB Portable USB 3.0 HDD Review

Final Thoughts and Pricing

Pricing

When looking for just this drive that I’ve tested today, there are two things you can look for. As there are previous versions with the same name, that’s a vital piece of information. Either the drive will be labelled as the 2018-version, or you can recognise it on the products number which starts with HDTB420.

At the time of this review, Toshiba’s Canvio Basics 2TB can be found on Amazon for £74.99 and $66.99.

Final Thoughts

On the outside, Toshiba’s Canvio Basics 2TB looks like an ordinary portable hard disk drive, and it is. Still, it looks nice and has a nice feel to hold too. You get a lot of capacity options besides the 2TB version, but that’s the one I tested today and the one we’re talking about now. Design and feature-wise, there aren’t a whole lot of surprises, it’s a basic portable drive. But the name already reveals that fact. So instead of talking a lot about that, let us talk about the performance.

Performance

It is truly rare that a product surprises me these days. I’ve been doing this kind of review for quite some time, and I have tested a lot of storage drives. Then I get a drive like the Toshiba Canvio Basics in the office, and I don’t expect much from it. As mentioned above, it’s a classic and basic drive. When I benchmark a drive, I ignore the actual results to avoid the temptation of repeating tests to remove irregularities and don’t look at them until I’m done testing it. Then when going through the results, adding them to my database, and creating the charts, I make up my mind about the performance and see where it lays in comparison. Usually, it’s right where I expect it to be, but not this time.

Toshiba’s Canvio Basics handles sequential data really well and above expectations. Even more so when we consider the fact that it is a 2.5-inch drive which is inside the Canvio Basics. The random performance isn’t as great, but that’s also something a drive like this rarely will be used for. You won’t run apps or databases from it; you’ll be using it as a backup-target or for transporting your data from one place to another. And it does that extremely well, easily beating other USB drives in the charts. If you’ll want it in numbers, then it’s about 15 to 20 percent faster than other similar drives previously tested. Now that’s impressive!

Pros

• Ready to use out of the box and properly aligned (NTFS)
• USB 3.0 with an impressive performance for its size
• Bus-powered
• Matte-black finish which feels and looks good.

Cons

• Not as good a performer with random read and write operations as it is with sequential

“Toshiba’s Canvio Basics 2TB performs above the norm for 2.5-inch drives and won’t break any budgets when you purchase it!”

Thank you, Toshiba, for providing us with this sample