If you are hooked in the Mac universe, paying hundreds and thousands of dollars for extra storage and dongles is painful. Recently we discover a compact product could be the answer to all.
The HybridDrive is an external SSD that offers a storage upgrade for your Macbook Pros at a much lower price tag. It also doubles as a dongle with USB-A ports, an SD card slot, an HDMI port, and a micro-SD port.
If there’s one thing we can say about the hub, that is practical. It’s designed not for video editors who need to editor 8k raw footage with no lag, but for everyday users who work on the go. The drive is thoughtfully designed, versatile and compact.
HybridDrive is not intrusive on your backpack storage. It’s about half of the size of an iPhone and weighs in at just 2 oz or 56 grams.
As a dongle, HybridDrive should cover your daily needs with two USB A ports (USB 3.1 Gen 2), a 4k 60HZ HRD HDMI port, a micro SD UHS-II slot, a UHS-II SD slot, and a USB-C data and power delivery port.
The UHS-II SD slots can deliver transfer speed at 200MB/s. Unless you work for breaking news or backing up extremely large files, it should be just fast enough.
One of our favorite parts of the design is HybridDrive gives you the option of connecting throw the dock or the USB-C plug. Without the plug option, it could block the headphone jack.
As for the storage, HybridDrive offers options from 128 GB to 2TB. The drive could read and write at 450 MB/s. It’s slightly slower than a stand-alone external SSD drive (Samsung Portable SSD T5 at 540 MB/s). However, for non-power users, it won’t make a big difference. It is fast enough for you to use it as a bootable drive for an entire OS when needed.
Although HybridDrive mainly targets Mac users, it also works as an external storage unit for other USB-C devices.
One unit is going at $224 on Indiegogo. Click here to see more.
