CalDigit AV Pro 2 3TB external drive (USB 3/USB C)

Based in Orange County, California, CalDigit has been offering storage solutions to the professional market for over ten years. One of the latest products to hit the market is the AV Pro 2, an evolution of the company's original single drive design. The AV Pro 2 not only provides external storage but can also charge a laptop and be used as a USB hub. CalDigit supplied a 3TB drive for this review but the range goes up to 6TB for HDD with 1TB and 2TB SSD versions are also available. In addition to being an external storage device it also can be used as an USB hub with a pair of USB 3.0 Type-A ports. The other trick up its sleeve is that it can be used to charge a Thunderbolt 3 equipped laptop up to 30W via the USB-C port. Even the USB hub ports support fast charging at 1.5A. The AV Pro2 also supports UASP (USB attached SCSI protocol) for faster data transfers. CalDigit quote a transfer rate for the AV Pro2 of 200MB/s for the HDD equipped versions and 430MB/s for the SSD models. Physical Specifications: Usable Capacities: 3TB Hard drive: Toshiba DTO1ACA300 Interface: USB-C, USB 3 Form Factor: External Dimensions: 147 x 45.5 x 241.5mm Drive Weight: 1.98kg The front of the box has a very large image of the drive under which are a number of bullet points describing the drives compatibility and other features. The rear of the box is very informative with four panels describing the AV Pro2's laptop charging function, the dual interface, the embedded USB hub and finally USAP technology. One end panel has an image of the drive with a list of specifications while the other panel displays images of the front and rear of the drive with all the hardware features highlighted. The box bundle provides all you need to get started using the AV Pro2; single USB Type-C and Micro-B cables, drive bay keys and a 60W power supply. You also get a stand for the drive. The build quality of the AV Pro2 is first rate with good quality aluminium used in its construction. Being aluminium, the whole chassis is one big heatsink and to that end, the sides of the unit have channels cut into them to aid in cooling. The bottom of the chassis has four rubber feet but if you want to save save space and use the drive standing on its side, you can use the bundled drive stand for extra stability. Apart from the drive bay door, the only other thing on the front of the drive is the power button/drive access LED which glows green when active. The rear panel is home to all the USB ports that the drive supports. There are four in all; single USB 3.1 Type-C, USB 3.0 Micro B and a pair of USB 3.0 ports that connect to the USB hub. As well as the aluminium chassis acting as one large heatsink there is also a small smart fan housed in the rear panel to help keep the drive cool. Accessing the hard drive of the AV Pro 2 is straightforward enough (as long as you don't lose the keys). The drive bay door has a small hexagonal lock which is unlocked with one of the two keys. Once this is unlocked, the drive door is released by using the second, pin key in the small pin release hole next to the hexagonal lock. Our review sample AV Pro 2 came with a 3TB Toshiba (DTO1ACA300) drive installed. This drive uses three 1TB platters (discs), has a spin speed of 7,200 rpm and a 64MB cache. Crystalmark is a useful benchmark to measure theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSD’s. We are using V3.0.3. The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage. AS SSD is a great free tool designed just for benching Solid State Drives. It performs an array of sequential read and write tests, as well as random read and write tests with sequential access times over a portion of the drive. AS SSD includes a sub suite of benchmarks with various file pattern algorithms but this is difficult in trying to judge accurate performance figures. CalDigit quote a transfer rate for the HDD equipped AV Pro2 of 200MB/s, a figure that is confirmed by both the ATTO and AS SSD Sequential tests. IOMeter is another open source synthetic benchmarking tool which is able to simulate the various loads placed on hard drive and solid state drive technology. We set IOmeter up (as shown above) to test both backup and restore performance on a 100GB file. Our backup/restore tests confirm the official 200MB/s transfer rate with reads at 203.94MB/s and writes at 207.78MB/s In our throughput test, reads peaked at 298.23MB/s before dropping back to just under the 200MB/s mark. Writes on the other hand peaked at just 204.25MB/s. To test real life performance of a drive we use a mix of folder/file types and by using the FastCopy utility (which gives a time as well as MB/s result) we record the performance of drive reading from & writing to a 256GB Samsung SSD850 PRO. 100GB data file 60GB iso image. 60GB Steam folder – 29,521 files. 50GB File folder – 28,523 files. 12GB Movie folder – 24 files (mix of Blu-ray and 4K files). 10GB Photo folder – 621 files (mix of .png, raw and .jpeg images). 10GB Audio folder – 1,483 files (mix of mp3 and .flac files). 5GB (1.5bn pixel) photo. The AV Pro2 had no problem dealing with our real life file transfer tests, even the 50GB file and 60GB Steam folder's that often slow a drive down were dealt with very well. The CalDigit AV Pro2 screams quality, from the well-built chassis to the dual lock drive door. Apart from looking good the chassis has a more important function working as one large heatsink to pull away heat from the hard drive. Although the AV Pro 2 looks like a standard external drive, albeit a well-built one, it has a couple of tricks up its sleeve to make it stand out in the crowd. First up, it can recharge a notebook! Using the USB-C port it can deliver a 30W charge to a notebook equipped with a Thunderbolt 3 port while the pair of USB 3.0 Type-A ports powered by the embedded USB hub offer fast charging at 1.5A (7.5W). CalDigit quotes a transfer rate for the AV Pro 2 at 200MB/s (the SSD option is quoted at 430MB/s) which we could confirm with the ATTO benchmark, the review drive producing a 209MB/s figure for both reads and writes. When it comes to dealing with real life files, the drive didn't break the 200MB/s barrier for either read or writes but got very close in a couple of the tests; both the 100GB file and the 60GB iso image were read back from the drive at 199.6MB/s. The CalDigit AV Pro 2 can be brought direct from the CalDigit shop for £239 (inc VAT) HERE (Until October 23rd, CalDigit are offering a free upgrade from 3TB to 4TB) Pros: Build quality. Built in USB hub. Ability to provide up to 30W charging for laptop. Cons: Pricey. Kitguru says: CalDigit's AV Pro 2 melds excellent build quality with a huge amount of storage capacity and the abilities to recharge a notebook and be used as an USB hub.