The Lexar SL200 (starts at $74.99 for 512GB; $219.99 for 2TB as tested), an attractive, highly portable external solid-state drive, is a decent choice as a grab-and-go drive for people on tight budgets. This SSD won’t win any speed contests with its SATA-based internals and modest rated speeds, but it does offer 256-bit AES encryption to keep your sensitive documents secure. It is, however, up against a host of considerably faster drives for just a little more money.
Dialing Back the Speed on External SSDs
The SL200 is a follow-up to 2020’s Lexar SL100 Pro, the company’s first foray into the consumer external-SSD space. That drive features USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps) connectivity and is rated for maximum read and write speeds of 950MBps and 900MBps, respectively. With the SL200, Lexar went with slower USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5Gbps maximum) technology, and this drive sells at a lower price point.
Measuring just 0.4 by 2.4 by 3.4 inches (HWD) and weighing a mere 1.4 ounces, the SL200 is highly compact and wafer-light. It’s copper-brown in color, with an aluminum plate bearing the Lexar logo on top, and a plastic base with an intriguing textured pattern of tiny dots arranged in intersecting curves. A small section on the bottom contains product identification and certification information.
In the middle of one of the short sides is a USB Type-C port. The drive comes with two short cables, one of them USB-C-to-USB-C, the other USB-C-to-USB-A. To the right of the port is an activity light, a feature often left off in budget—and even some midprice—external SSDs.
The SL200 comes formatted in exFAT, so it can be used out of the box with either Windows machines or Macs. The drive comes pre-loaded with Lexar DataSafe software for both platforms, and this software allows you to enable the 256-bit AES data encryption. It sets up a password-protected “safe” on the drive, into which you drop the files you want encrypted.
At each of its three capacities, the SL200 is rated at up to 550MBps and 400MBps in sequential read and write speeds, respectively, which is a typical rating for an external SSD with SATA-based internal components running over a USB 3.2 Gen 1 connection.
Lexar backs the SL200 with a modest three-year warranty; many drive manufacturers are now covering their SSDs for five years.
Testing the Lexar SL200: SATA-Style Speeds
We test external SSDs using PC Labs’ main storage testbed, which is built on an Asus Prime X299 Deluxe motherboard with an Intel Core i9-10980XE Extreme Edition CPU. The system has 16GB of DDR4 Corsair Dominator RAM clocked to 3,600MHz and employs an Nvidia GeForce discrete graphics card.
We subjected the SL200 to our usual suite of benchmarks, comprising Crystal DiskMark 6.0, PCMark 10 Storage, BlackMagic’s Disk Speed Test, and our own folder transfer test. The first two are run on the testbed PC mentioned above, with the drive formatted in NTFS; the latter two are done on a 2016 MacBook Pro with the drive formatted for exFAT. Crystal DiskMark’s sequential speed tests provide a traditional measure of drive throughput, simulating best-case, straight-line transfers of large files, while the PCMark 10 Storage test measures an SSD’s readiness for a wide variety of everyday tasks.
The SL200’s Crystal DiskMark sequential read and, especially, its write score were well short of its rated speeds. Its Mac-based BlackMagic test scores were better, with the SL200 exceeding its rated write speed. Its PCMark 10 Storage Overall Score is in line with those of other USB 3.2 Gen 1 drives we have tested, as are the results of our drag-and-drop folder transfer test. It indicates an external drive built on Serial ATA (SATA) internals with a SATA-to-USB internal controller, while higher-end external SSDs employ PCI Express guts for faster speeds on compliant USB ports.
A Gen 1 Drive in a Gen 2 World
Almost all of the USB 3.2 Gen 1 drives we have seen in the past year or two have been hyper-secure “lockbox” models like the iStorage DiskAshur M2 or specialty models like the RGB-lit TeamGroup T-Force Treasure Touch. They bring something extra to the picture, and maximum speed is largely an afterthought. Mainstream SSDs with speed ratings of 600MBps or less are becoming rare. The Buffalo SSD-PG Portable SSD is shockproof and drop-proof and sells for a pittance, but its Crystal DiskMark read and write speeds were both in the 200MBps range. The Crucial X6 also costs less than the SL200, and in our testing posted slightly higher read and write speeds.
This leaves the faster, USB 3.2 Gen 2 drives, many of which cost not much more than the SL200. The ADATA SE800, whose 1TB model is frequently on sale for about $120, is ruggedized and has read and write speeds of around 900MBps. Like the SL200, the Samsung SSD T7 has 256-bit AES encryption, but its speeds are in the 900MBps range. The WD My Passport SSD (2020) costs a little more than these models; it also offers AES encryption and has read and write speeds averaging about 1,000MBps.
Those comparisons leave the SL200 a bit out in the cold. The SL200 is a handsome and affordable drive, and it holds its own against other USB 3.2 Gen 1 drives, but it’s up against a host of feature-rich Gen 2 drives that we’ve clocked at about double its speed. It’s a hard sell, unless you can find it on sale or you’re really strapped for cash.
