Seagate’s new external SSDs blend style with performance

Seagate announced a pair of external solid-state drives with looks to match their performance at CES 2020 on Monday. 

First up: an external USB 3.2 Gen2x2 FireCuda Gaming SSD designed as a companion to Seagate’s FireCuda Gaming Dock. Styled similarly to the dock, with RGB lighting that can be synced with the dock’s LEDs, the drive was purpose-built for gamers. Regardless of marketing speak, it contains a standard Seagate FireCuda NVMe 510 SSD that easily earned our praise (and our Editors’ Choice award). The  FireCuda Gaming SSD can deliver data at up to 2GBps and will be available in $190/500GB, $260/1TB, and $500/2TB flavors soon.

Seagate

Also new is the external USB 3.1 Gen2 (10Gbps) BarraCuda Fast SSD which will be available in the same 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB capacities, albeit with cheaper $95/$170/$300 pricing. Not necessarily for gamers, the BarraCuda Fast can write and deliver data at more than 500MBps and sports simple but classy Seagate green LED lighting. The connector is Type-C.

Both drives include Seagate’s Toolkit with simple backup and sync, and the BarraCuda Fast includes a complimentary two-month subscription to the Adobe Creative Cloud Photography Plan.

This article was edited to correct Thuderbolt 3 to USB 3.2 2×2.