Final Thoughts
Pricing
At the time of writing the Silicon Power Armor A85 1TB drive can be found at NewEgg for just $80.43, at Amazon UK for £64.00, and through Geizhals for €74.30.
Conclusion
The Silicon Power Armor A85 is a beautifully designed drive, as I already mentioned on the first page. The metallic enclosure with the black top and rubber ring around the drive keeps it simple, but it works. The drive presents itself well, especially considering it is a rugged drive. Usually, this kind of drive has huge external rubber bumpers that also may look cool, but not so classy. The Armor A85 brings style into the rugged market segment.
The rubber ring around the drive isn’t just for looks, it also doubles as a practical cable holder for the included USB cable. A clever way to utilize the feature and one that also complements the design.
With a drop resistance from heights up to 122cm and the ability to stay submerged in up to a meter of water for over 30 minutes, the Armor A85 provides excellent protection for your valuable files. Speaking of valuable, the 256-bit encryption ability also provides excellent protection for your valuable digital files.
Performance wise we didn’t see anything spectacular, but it was right on what is to be expected. Basically, it is a 2.5-inch HDD and a performance slightly above the 110MB/s marker is what we expect here. And the Armor A85 delivered that steadily across the fillage tests.
Pros
- Constant performance
- Great protection
- Stylish design
- Great value for the price
- Free Backup and Encryption software
Cons
- Not the fastest test results we have seen
“The SP Armor A85 provides style and protection to your files when you’re on the go, but also when you’re at home. On top of that, it’s cheap per GB of storage and comes with a great software bundle.”
Thank You Silicon Power for providing us with this sample.
The downside of the SP HDD Lock Utility is that the sofware itself must be installed in the PC where you connect the drive to. Otherwise it is impossible to access the drive.
Meaning, if you install the SP HDD Lock Utility in your PC, you can set the password and it works as shown here. But what about plugin it into a different PC? Unless the utility is installed on that other PC as well, the drive will not even show up!
I really do not understand why the utility is not into the drive itself as with my other Western Digital external HDD. In the WD, you can connect it to ANY computer and it will just prompt for the password to access it. The software it is of course, included in the HDD.
Major flaw that is unfortunately making me return this drive.