INTRODUCTION

   Portable solid state drives (SSD's), USB flash drives and memory cards may have risen in popularity in recent years (mainly due to price cuts and in some cases superior read and write performance) but as we've all come to expect by now it's virtually impossible for them to ever compete both in terms of capacity and price with regular portable hard drives. Certainly portable SSDs, USB flash drives and memory cards are all much smaller compared to portable HDDs but if you need to carry several terabytes worth of data around with you (for professional or personal use) then size shouldn't really be much of an issue (especially if you're on a budget). To date Silicon Power has had a near excellent track record when it comes to portable hard drives and since they recently released the Armor A85 line we just had to take a closer look.

   Founded in 2003 by a group of enthusiastic data storage industry experts, Silicon Power is committed to delivering outstanding product and service quality. Headquartered and with our own state-of-the-art production site in Taipei, we have become a leading manufacturer of flash memory cards, USB flash drives, portable hard drives, solid state drives, DRAM modules and industrial-grade products. As an international player with four branch offices around the globe, we continuously strive to offer the perfect data storage solution for all requirements of modern digitalized life. With a strong focus on combining innovative technology and award-winning design, we live up to our brand promise to reliably preserve and protect your most valuable data. Because memory is personal.

   Just as its name suggests the brand new Armor A85 line of portable hard drives (currently available in 1/2/3/4/5TB) lands very close to the old A80 model in terms of durability (and actually surpasses it). To be more specific the Armor A85 features an aluminum exterior enclosure which is not only IP68 certified (dust and water proof up to well over 1 meter beneath water) and pressure-proof (up to 500kg) but it's also compliant with the US military MIL-STD-810G Procedure IV transit drop test (survived falls from heights up to 3m). Under the hood of the Armor A85 2TB variant we find a 7mm thick Seagate Mobile HDD 2TB (ST2000LM007) model featuring a rotational speed of 5400RPM with 128MB of cache. Just like several models in the Armor line the A85 also features a convenient cable-carry function, has a full sized USB 3.1 Gen 1 port and is covered by a 3 year limited warranty.