Apple and Blackmagic have teamed up to design and launch a new external graphics processor (GPU) called the Blackmagic eGPU that brings “desktop-class performance” to the MacBook Pro (which. Apple and Blackmagic have teamed up to design and launch a new external graphics processor (GPU) called the Blackmagic eGPU that brings “desktop-class performance” to the MacBook Pro (which. With an external GPU, maybe external drives and add ons you will have a Semi-Modular Mac Pro on your desktop. Davewrite Thursday, January 4, 2018 - 6:44 pm Reply. The option for an Intel Core i9 processor with six cores and a clock-speed ceiling of 4.8GHz makes its way to the 2018 refresh of Apple's 15-inch MacBook Pro (starts at $2,399; $4,699 as tested).
Apple recently ushered in its long-awaited refreshes to two product lines that haven’t received a lot of love lately: the 2018 MacBook Air and the 2018 Mac mini (review). Both machines have been updated with new processors, Apple’s T2 chip, modernized I/O, and several other enhancements.
The MacBook Air, though, is by far the more popular machine, and will demand the majority of the public’s attention between the two. This is the portable Mac that lots of people have been waiting for, but does it live up to its namesake? Watch our video review for the details.
Synology RT2600ac: The AirPort Extreme replacement.Specifications
Special thanks to Hyper — creator of the 87W and 61W USB-C Hub for MacBook Pro, and the HyperJuice Charger — for sponsoring 9to5Mac on YouTube.
Finally, a Retina display…
The Retina display checks off the biggest want for MacBook Air customers, as it is the second to last product in Apple’s entire lineup, iOS or Mac, to receive a Retina update. The lowly non-Retina iMac still remains.
The Retina display in the MacBook Air packs over 4 million pixels in the machine’s 13.3-inch display. The screen features a 2560 x 1600 native resolution IPS panel that provides much-improved viewing angles over last-gen’s Air.
The new MacBook Air display also receives a significant color upgrade. While not technically classifying as a wide color display, the 2018 model supports nearly 50% more colors than the previous hardware.
The display on the previous MacBook Air was by far its weakest quality, so the screen enhancements alone make the new model a worthwhile upgrade proposition for existing customers.
Another weak link of the previous MacBook Air was its overly generous bezels. The redesigned model ushers in the type of reduced bezels with edge-to-edge glass that MacBook and MacBook Pro users have been enjoying for years. The glass, in particular, is a much-needed visual improvement, as the outgoing machine’s aluminum bezels made the display feel cramped and outdated.
Reduced footprint
Compared to the last-generation MacBook Air, the Retina-enabled machine is 0.21 pounds lighter, a not insignificant reduction in weight. The new machine is also 0.07-inches thinner, and features width and depth reductions of 0.83- and 0.58-inches respectively. In other words, it’s a more portable and travel-friendly machine than the previous generation Air, yet it still packs in the same 13.3-inch display size.
That acknowledged, the MacBook Air with Retina display remains a larger machine than Apple’s svelte 12-inch MacBook in every dimension. The width and depth differences between these machines isn’t shocking, but the MacBook Air is also thicker and heavier.
With this in mind, the real “MacBook Air”, in my opinion, is the 12-inch MacBook. I’ve always thought that it deserved the venerated “Air” moniker to begin with. Unfortunately, there have been no updates for the 12-inch model in 2018, and its future remains a question mark in Apple’s lineup.
But here’s where things get funny and slightly ironic. The MacBook Air is actually thicker at its thickest point than the current-generation MacBook Pro. If anything, that speaks to the marketing power of the MacBook Air name.
Price
For the last few years, the MacBook Air has been the budget option as far as Apple laptops are concerned. The new MacBook Air starts at $1199, but Apple continues to sell its last-gen model without a Retina display for $999. Fully maxed out with 16GB of RAM and 1.5TB of SSD storage, the 2018 MacBook Air can cost more than a well-equipped MacBook Pro.
The entry-level MacBook Air with Retina display arrives sporting a dual core Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM, and 128GB of flash storage. Interestingly enough, the base model 2017 MacBook Pro without Touch Bar, which hasn’t received an update recently, can be had for just $100 more.
When comparing the 2018 MacBook Air with the 2017 MacBook Pro, you’ll notice a few similarities between these two machines:
But despite their similarities, the MacBook Air features several key differences that will matter to customers:
Although the “Air” designation is funny given the device’s thickness, the MacBook Air, at 2.75 pounds, is noticeably lighter than both the previous Air and the MacBook Pro, so it still makes sense. Various factors play into the weight difference, including that iconic tapered design.
A power-sipping CPU
Despite all of the display improvements, and the reduced footprint, Apple rates the new MacBook Air similarly to its predecessor when it comes to battery life.
Even though the battery in the new MacBook Air is smaller, 50.3-watt-hours versus 54-watt-hours, the new machine features better battery life. How?
The 2018 MacBook Air features a single processor option — a 1.6GHz dual-core 8th-generation Intel Core i5 processor, which can turbo up to 3.6GHz and supports Hyper-Threading. This is a 7W Intel i5-8210Y CPU with integrated Intel UHD Graphics 617. Compared to the chips in the previous MacBook Air, which were 15W, this processor is designed to draw less power.
For most people in the market for a MacBook Air, I think the 7W i5 processor is okay, and will do everything you need for day-to-day tasks. Word processing, web browsing, and media consumption will all perform well on the MacBook Air. If you set the right expectations, even light video editing and other tasks that typically require more power, will perform decently.
Someone in the market for a MacBook Air shouldn’t be looking to heavily push its CPU or graphics as if it were a desktop — that’s why machines like the 6-core MacBook Pro exist.
Benchmarks
Here is a Geekbench 4 CPU benchmark comparing the new 2018 MacBook Air and last year’s MacBook Pro without Touch Bar. As you can see, the MacBook Pro edges out the MacBook Air in both single- and multi-core tests.
The iGPUs on both of these machines are relatively weak, but that’s to be expected. Still, the year-old MacBook Pro has the edge when comparing GPU performance.
Cinebench R15 results paint a similar picture. Neither machine is impressive when it comes to graphics performance, but the MacBook Pro is the winner by default.
For me, as someone who works with video on a day in and day out basis, Final Cut Performance is a big differentiator. The MacBook Pro provides much better Final Cut Pro X performance when compared to the MacBook Air with Retina display. It’s possible to edit videos on the MacBook Air, for sure, but the experience isn’t nearly as pleasant as it is on the more powerful machine.
(Shorter is better)
Of course, most people don’t edit videos every day, so you’ll need to decide whether these types of things truly matter to you. For most people, the answer to that question is: No.
The final benchmark compares the PCIe-based SSDs found in the two machines. As you can see, the MacBook Pro has a faster SSD in both read and write. Both SSDs are 128GB, which makes them easy to compare. Keep in mind that when you configure a larger SSD, the write speeds will significantly improve.
Keyboard, trackpad, and Touch ID
The MacBook Air with Retina display receives Apple’s third-generation butterfly switch keyboard. The new keyboard features keys that are individually backlit, which looks more uniform when typing in dimly lit settings.
The updated keyboard addresses some of the well-documented issues that plagued previous versions, but it will still take some getting used to for anyone coming directly from the previous MacBook Air.
Alongside the keyboard is a stand-alone Touch ID sensor, the biometric technology that lets users quickly unlock, authenticate with macOS and third-party apps, and make Apple Pay purchases.
The inclusion of Touch ID is significant for the MacBook Air, because it’s the first Apple laptop to include the feature without the costly, and largely useless (in my opinion), Touch Bar found on Apple’s MacBook Pro lineup.
Touch ID on the MacBook Air is possible thanks to the inclusion of the Apple T2 security chip, the same chip that’s in the 2018 Mac mini, the MacBook Pro, and the iMac Pro. This chip does a bevy of things security-wise, and also consolidates many of the machine’s controllers into a central location. For more information about the Apple T2 security chip, be sure to read our 2018 Mac mini review.
Another big addition to the MacBook Air with Retina display is the 20% larger Force Touch trackpad. The MacBook Air was the last Apple laptop to use the diving board trackpad mechanism, so this is another welcome change. The Force Touch trackpad, though not as large as the trackpad found on the MacBook Pro, makes it so that you get the exact same feedback response no matter where you click on the surface – it’s the best trackpad on any laptop, hands-down.
Camera, speakers and microphones
The new MacBook Air’s camera is the same 720p FaceTime HD camera found in the previous generation MacBook Air. I wish the camera was 1080p, but at least it’s better than the ridiculously low-resolution 480p camera on the 12-inch MacBook.
Speakers are 25% louder on the 2018 MacBook Air, with two times the bass response than the previous generation. You’ll never mistake the machine for a proper stereo, but if you’re aware of how limited the last model’s speakers were, you’ll no doubt appreciate any effort to improve the audio fidelity.
Along with the speaker improvements, a new three-array microphone makes an appearance as well. The microphones are geared towards lending better sound input for FaceTime calls, and improving the accuracy of Siri communication.
Thunderbolt 3 I/O
As you might imagine, a lot has changed on the I/O front since the last major MacBook Air refresh. Apple has gone all in with USB-C/Thunderbolt 3, allowing for screaming fast connectivity with external storage, displays, and even external GPUs. The new MacBook Air includes a pair of Thunderbolt 3 ports on the left side of the keyboard, which also happen to be the same ports used for charging the machine.
Thunderbolt 3 is a major upgrade to the MacBook Air, and it allows interfacing with high bandwidth devices in a way that wasn’t possible on previous versions. Like I illustrated with the 2018 Mac mini, there are so many expandability options to choose from, it’s almost like being able to upgrade your computer from the outside in.
Recommended MacBook Air USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 accessories
The downside is that Apple has gone all-in with Thunderbolt 3, and left other handy ports like an SD Card reader behind. You’ll now need to use a dock or a dongle to connect an SD Card to your MacBook Air, which is annoying at best.
As a result of the adoption of Thunderbolt 3, the 2018 MacBook Air ditches the popular MagSafe connector for charging. It means that one of the USB-C ports will be occupied any time you need to charge the machine. It also means that you lose the utility that MagSafe, a magnetic-attaching power connector that easily disconnected if someone happened to trip over the cable, brought to the table.
The handy USB 3 Type-A ports that used to reside on each side of the MacBook Air have also been removed. This follows the trend of Apple simplifying its I/O on its laptops, providing Thunderbolt 3 ports, and not much else.
9to5Mac’s Take
Depending on how you used the previous MacBook Air, the 2018 model is a downgrade in some ways. There’s no SD Card reader, no USB-A ports, and no MagSafe. There’s also a power-sipping 7W CPU, instead of the 15W CPUs that occupied the internals of previous Air models.
Performance on the new MacBook Air is better than the previous-gen model, but it may not be as drastic of an improvement as one might have been hoping for in a MacBook Air redesign. If you engage with applications that require a healthy dose of CPU and/or GPU power, you’ll definitely want the MacBook Pro.
I also wish that there were USB-C ports on the right side of the device to make it more convenient to charge the MacBook Air. Having ports on both sides of the machine is one of the more underrated features of the Touch Bar-enabled MacBook Pro; it’s one of those conveniences that you don’t fully appreciate until you need it.
But make no mistake, the MacBook Air is a major upgrade over its predecessor in a lot of ways. The IPS-enabled Retina display is a welcome presence, providing much-improved viewing angles and better colors as well.
The new MacBook Air has better battery life, better sound, and super-expandable Thunderbolt 3 I/O. It packs all of this into a footprint that’s both smaller and lighter than the laptop it replaces.
This is the mainstream Apple computer that many will be using for years to come, and thanks to Thunderbolt 3, the machine you purchase today isn’t necessarily the same machine that you’re stuck with for the long haul.
Despite some deficiencies, Apple fans who are migrating from the previous generation will be mostly happy with the 2018 MacBook Air with Retina display — it’s the mainstream Mac that will satisfy the majority of users.
What are your thoughts on the new MacBook Air? Sound off in the comments below with your opinion.
Your guide
After 20 hours of new research and testing, we found that the best external desktop hard drive for most people is Western Digital’s 4 TB My Book. The My Book is reliable, fast, and less expensive than the other desktop drives we tested, plus it has enough space for your future storage needs and a long, three-year warranty.
Our pick4 TB Western Digital My Book
The 4 TB My Book is reliable, fast, and cheaper than the competition.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $95.
But all of the desktop drives we tested this year were good. We found the speed differences between them to be small: All but one of our finalists performed within about 20 seconds of one another when transferring a Blu-ray movie, and all completed a Time Machine backup within 4 minutes of one another. Because they perform so similarly, we recommend getting the cheapest desktop hard drive you can find from a trustworthy maker. Right now, that means the 4 TB WD My Book.
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Runner-upWD Elements (4 TB)
Western Digital’s 4 TB Elements is about as fast as our top pick, but its warranty doesn’t last as long.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $95.
If the 4 TB My Book is out of stock or the price goes up, Western Digital’s 4 TB Elements is a great and dependable alternative. The Elements is about as fast as our top pick: In our tests, its average write speed was 7.7 MB/s slower, and it took about 5 seconds longer to transfer a Blu-ray film, but those differences were within the margin of error. At this writing, it costs only 46¢ more per terabyte, but prices fluctuate; if you find the Elements for less than the My Book, it’s a better buy. This model lacks backup software, though, and it has a shorter, two-year warranty.
Also greatWD My Book (8 TB)
The 8 TB version of the Western Digital My Book offers reliability, fast transfer speeds, and more storage than our other picks.
Buying Options![]()
*At the time of publishing, the price was $170.
Macrumors
If you need more storage, we recommend the Western Digital 8 TB My Book. The 8 TB My Book is just as reliable as our top pick, and it was about as fast in our Blu-ray and HD Tune tests, but about 4 minutes slower in our Time Machine testing. It’s cheaper per terabyte than the other My Book models, but it still costs around $170 at this writing, so we recommend it only if you know you need that much space.
Everything we recommendOur pick4 TB Western Digital My Book
The 4 TB My Book is reliable, fast, and cheaper than the competition.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $95.
Runner-upWD Elements (4 TB)
Western Digital’s 4 TB Elements is about as fast as our top pick, but its warranty doesn’t last as long.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $95.
Also greatWD My Book (8 TB)
The 8 TB version of the Western Digital My Book offers reliability, fast transfer speeds, and more storage than our other picks.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $170.
The researchWhy you should trust us
Wirecutter has researched and recommended hard drives since early 2012, and our PC team has over eight years of combined experience testing hard drives and solid-state drives—as your guide, I’ve spent the past two years reviewing hard drives and portable SSDs, too. We’ve collectively put in hundreds of hours researching and testing hard drives over the past few years.
Who this is for
If you’re not backing up the important documents and photos on your computer, you should start. Your computer’s internal drive will stop working someday, and unless your data is backed up, it’ll be gone forever. Fortunately, backing up your data is easy, and getting started takes only a few minutes: Read our advice and set up a system that will back up your files automatically both to an external hard drive and the cloud. Just backing up to one or the other isn’t enough; having both on-site and cloud backups ensures that your data stays safe from localized threats such as fire, theft, or natural disaster, as well as Internet outages or disruptions to the cloud backup provider. A desktop external hard drive is a great local backup for a computer that mostly stays parked on a desk.
You should consider replacing your backup drives between the third and sixth year of use. If your drive dies and you have a cloud backup, you won’t lose data, but restoring from the cloud will take a very long time. According to statistics from cloud backup service Backblaze, hard drives are most likely to fail either within the first 18 months of use or after three years. About 5 percent of drives fail in the first 18 months of use, with the failure rate dipping to about 1.5 percent for another 18 months. At three years of service, the failure rate jumps to almost 12 percent. At four years, the failure rate is 20 percent. Judging from five years of data, Backblaze estimates that more than half of hard drives will last six years.
If you spend most of your time working at one desk, you should get a desktop external drive. But if you frequently move between locations, a portable external drive is the better choice. They’re more expensive per terabyte than bigger desktop models, and they’re a bit slower, but portable hard drives are smaller and lighter than desktop drives and don’t need an additional power adapter. They’re also designed to withstand a little more abuse (although one bump can still lead to failure).
![]() How we picked
Ideally, an external hard drive is something you don’t notice much. It should sit on your desk, quietly spinning away, storing and backing up your data without a lot of setup or ongoing maintenance. These are the features you should look for in a desktop hard drive, in rough order of importance:
We also made note of drive noise and extra USB ports as we tested the external desktop hard drives. These factors aren’t dealbreakers, but they are good to keep in mind.
How we tested
After narrowing our list of finalists by price and capacity, we tested four 4 TB desktop hard drives and three 8 TB models. For each one, we ran HD Tune Pro, a benchmarking program that tests transfer speeds and access time across the entire disk. You can read a more in-depth explanation of the program at the HD Tune website. We also timed the file transfer of a 45.5 GB rip of a Blu-ray movie from start to finish, running each transfer three times and determining the average to rule out performance hiccups. Finally, we timed how long each external hard drive took to back up with Time Machine on a 2016 MacBook Pro.
To spot any widespread reliability issues, we read through Amazon reviews for each of the drives we tested, and we counted the number of reported drive failures. This method has shortcomings: For one, people are more likely to post a review when they have a problem. Also, because of the limited information available in some reviews, it can be hard to differentiate between hardware failures and software issues or user errors that could cause problems with a drive. About half the drives we tested for this update are new, so they didn’t have many Amazon reviews. But this approach is the best we have for now.
We also looked at Backblaze’s hard drive reliability ratings from 2017, which are based on more than 90,000 drives the company uses in its cloud backup servers. Backup servers are a very different environment than a box on your desk: Bare drives in servers are accessed more often and are subject to more vibrations and more heat, whereas drives in desktop enclosures have more potential points of failure between the power connector, the USB connector, and the USB-to-SATA logic board. Even so, the Backblaze study is the largest, most recent sample of hard drive failures we have access to, and it’s always a fascinating read.
Our pick: WD My Book (4 TB)Our pick4 TB Western Digital My Book
The 4 TB My Book is reliable, fast, and cheaper than the competition.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $95.
Western Digital’s 4 TB My Book is the best desktop hard drive for most people because it’s reliable and it offers the best balance of speed and price. It was about as fast as the competition in all of our tests, it’s the least expensive drive we tested at this writing, and it has a longer warranty (three years) than the other contenders.
Although no hard drive is immune from failure, the WD My Book has proven reliable. We found just 21 reported failures out of 358 Amazon reviews of the 4 TB model, or 6 percent. Backblaze’s 2017 report notes that WD’s 4 TB drives had a low, 2.2 percent annualized failure rate. Neither of these research methods is a perfect indicator of the My Book’s reliability, but they are the best we have.
We tested how fast our 4 TB and 5 TB desktop hard drive contenders could transfer a Blu-ray movie. They all performed similarly, although the Toshiba Canvio was a bit faster than the competition. Shorter bars indicate better performance.
Most of the drives we tested performed similarly, with the 4 TB WD My Book having a slight edge in most of our tests. In our Blu-ray transfer test, all of the 4 TB drives we tested were within the margin of error of one another, but the 5 TB Toshiba Canvio was about 30 seconds faster than the competition. (That drive, however, costs considerably more.)
The 4 TB WD My Book performed a little better than the 4 TB competition in HD Tune read and write tests. The Toshiba Canvio was the fastest (and most expensive) drive we tested. Longer bars indicate better performance.
The 4 TB WD My Book was the fastest drive we tested at creating a backup with Time Machine, although all of the drives we tested were pretty quick. Shorter bars indicate better performance.
In HD Tune testing, the 4 TB WD My Book had a read speed of 143.8 megabytes per second and a write speed of 138.4 MB/s, operating a little faster than most of the competition. And it had the fastest Time Machine backup score of all the 4 TB drives we tested. Most of the drives performed similarly in these tests, except for the 4 TB Seagate Backup Plus Hub, which was notably slower.
The 4 TB My Book is the most cost-effective drive we found at the time of our research and writing. Although prices on hard drives fluctuate frequently, our pick was the least expensive in its competitive field: At the time, it cost around $96, or $24 per terabyte, while the majority of the drives we tested cost more than $100. Because all of the drives we tested are good, though, we recommend you buy the cheapest option available if prices change.
WD backs the 4 TB My Book with a three-year warranty, longer coverage than the competition offers. The drive did not get hot during our testing, and although this My Book occasionally made a low humming noise while we moved files around, we don’t think that’s cause for concern; all of the drives we tested make some noise.
Using the included WD Discovery app, you can import your data from a cloud storage or social media account to your drive. You can also use WD Drive Utilities to check for potential drive failures, major performance problems, and bad sectors on the My Book. (In addition, you can use it to permanently erase all the data on your drive.) You can activate 256-AES encryption by downloading WD’s Security software, enabling it, and setting a password.
Wirecutter staffers have used the WD My Book (in varying capacities) with no issue. Senior editor Nathan Edwards has owned the 6 TB version of the drive for about a year: “It's quieter than my old backup drive and relatively good-looking,” he said. “I don't bother it and it doesn't bother me, and my computer is backed up, so that seems good.”
How To Get Windows On Mac 9to5Runner-up: WD Elements (4 TB)Runner-upWD Elements (4 TB)
Western Digital’s 4 TB Elements is about as fast as our top pick, but its warranty doesn’t last as long.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $95.
If the 4 TB My Book is unavailable, or if its price goes up, WD’s 4 TB Elements desktop drive is a great second choice. It’s a reliable drive, although it isn’t quite as fast as our top pick. The difference in transfer time wasn’t substantial in any of our tests, though, and it costs about the same as the My Book per terabyte. It has the same software as our top pick too, but its warranty is only two years—one year less than the My Book’s coverage.
The Elements is about as reliable as the 4 TB My Book. We found just five reported failures out of 168 Amazon reviews for the Elements 4 TB option, giving this external hard drive a 3 percent failure rate. That’s a lower failure rate than our top pick has, but the Elements has roughly half as many reviews at this writing, so the reported failure rate may not be comparable.
In our testing, the Elements was about as quick as the 4 TB My Book, falling behind in our Blu-ray transfer test by only 5 seconds. In HD Tune tests, the Elements had a slightly slower write speed compared with our top pick, but the two models’ read speeds were even. And when we backed up to the Elements with Time Machine, it was the second-fastest drive we tested, falling just behind our top pick.
The WD Elements has a two-year warranty, one year less than our top pick, and it doesn’t come with any backup software. But that omission isn’t a dealbreaker because dragging and dropping files or using some other free backup program is an equally good option. Like our top pick, this drive did not get hot during testing, although it did make a little humming noise from time to time.
If you need more storage: WD My Book (8 TB)Also greatWD My Book (8 TB)
The 8 TB version of the Western Digital My Book offers reliability, fast transfer speeds, and more storage than our other picks.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $170.
If you want more space—say, you have a ton of large photos or videos or an existing media library and need room to expand in the future—Western Digital’s 8 TB My Book is the best option. Like our top pick, the higher-capacity WD My Book has a low, 6 percent reported failure rate (judging from Amazon reviews), and it performed the best of the three 8 TB options we tested. It’s also less expensive than the other 8 TB drives we tested, and it has the longest warranty. Currently the 8 TB My Book costs about $70 more than our top pick, though, so we recommend it only if you want the extra storage.
(We recommend the similarly performing WD 8 TB Easystore if it’s the same price as—or cheaper than—the 8 TB My Book. Because the Easystore is usually more expensive, we think the My Book is the better 8 TB choice for most people’s needs.)
While reading through 326 Amazon reviews of the 8 TB My Book, we found only 20 reviews—or 6 percent—that mentioned drive failure. This result was better than that for the 8 TB Seagate we tested, which had an 11 percent reported failure rate, or 62 noted failures out of 570 reviews on Amazon. The 8 TB Easystore had a mere 1.25 percent reported failure rate on Best Buy’s site—34 noted failures out of 2,708 reviews—but these results aren’t directly comparable because they’re from different retailers with different demographics and customer review systems.
Mac 9to5
Although the 8 TB WD My Book was the slowest in our Blu-ray read and write tests, all of the models we tested performed similarly. Shorter bars indicate better performance.
In our Blu-ray transfer tests, the 8 TB WD My Book was quick—it read a large Blu-ray video file in 4 minutes, 28 seconds and wrote that file in 4 minutes, 27 seconds. Although it was technically the slowest of the three 8 TB models we tested in this regard, all three performed within 15 seconds of one another in this test.
The 8 TB WD Easystore was faster than the 8 TB WD My Book in the HD Tune tests—but not by much. Longer bars indicate better performance.
The 8 TB My Book performed well in our HD Tune read and write tests, with results of 134 MB/s and 139.9 MB/s, respectively. It was significantly faster than the Seagate model in this test, but a little slower than the WD Easystore, falling short by 12.3 MB/s on reads and 5 MB/s on writes. The My Book also landed in the middle of the pack when backing up via Time Machine, storing 37.8 GB in 25 minutes, 49 seconds. The Easystore was about 2 minutes faster in this test.
The 8 TB WD My Book was about as fast as the 8 TB Seagate in our Time Machine backup test. The 8 TB WD Easystore was faster than both models by about 2 minutes. Shorter bars indicate better performance.
The 8 TB My Book is cheaper, as of this writing, and available at more retailers than the 8 TB WD Easystore. If you see the price on the Easystore come down, though, it’s worth buying.
The 8 TB My Book includes the same backup software as our top pick. It also comes with a longer warranty than the other 8 TB options we tested, three years of coverage.
The competition
Every hard drive we tested is adequate for the task of backing up your computer; only minor differences in speed, price, warranty, and included software differentiate them.
The WD Easystore is available in both 4 TB and 8 TB capacities; it’s also available only at Best Buy. While the 4 TB version’s price is often double that of our top picks (around $200), the 8 TB model’s price appears to fluctuate: The 8 TB Easystore cost around $140 while we were researching for this guide, but it costs $300 as of this writing. If you can find it for less than our current 8 TB pick, we encourage you to buy it; this model was the fastest 8 TB external hard drive in our HD Tune tests and Time Machine testing. If not, the small speed difference isn’t worth spending $15 to $130 more than what you would for the 8 TB My Book.
Although Toshiba’s 4 TB Canvio for Desktop is a great desktop hard drive, it’s quite expensive. It outperformed the WD My Book in most of our tests, but it costs nearly $20 more as of this writing. We don’t think the jump in speed is worth spending that much more money for most people, because it didn’t offer a noticeable improvement.
Seagate discontinued our previous top pick, the 4 TB Backup Plus Desktop, in favor of the new Backup Plus Hub.
Seagate’s 4 TB Backup Plus Hub fell behind our top pick in HD Tune testing by 15.8 MB/s on reads and 7 MB/s on writes. Although other external hard drives we tested (such as our runner-up pick) were similarly slow when writing files, none of them were as slow as the Seagate at reading them. The Seagate fell behind our top pick by 3 minutes in our Time Machine testing, and it was around 2.5 minutes slower than our runner-up in that regard. This model is a fine external drive, but because it costs about the same as our main pick and runner-up for slower performance, our picks are a better value.
Antimusic
The 8 TB Seagate Backup Plus Hub faced problems similar to those of the 4 TB model. It performed well in Blu-ray testing against our other 8 TB options and did fine in Time Machine tests, but it was notably slow during the HD Tune test. Compared with our 8 TB pick, it was 17.4 MB/s slower in the HD Tune read test, and 31.2 MB/s slower in the write test.
At the time of our research, the Seagate Backup Plus Hub for Mac was around $30 more expensive than the regular Seagate Backup Plus Hub we tested (and $40 more than our top pick). Because the two drives appeared to be the same otherwise, we dismissed them.
The Seagate Expansion Desktop was significantly slower than our top picks when we tested it in late 2016. It also has a shorter, one-year warranty and lacks backup software.
Other drives from G-Tech, LaCie, OWC, and Transcend were too expensive, ranging from $170 to $420 for 4 TB models—1.7 to 4.3 times as much as our top pick. Many suffered from limited availability, too.
SourcesExternal Cpu For Mac 9to5 Mac 2018 Benchmarks
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