This is Seagate latest edition to its portable Backup Plus series – the Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Touch. And I am pleased to have the chance to review this uniquely designed external hard drive. While I am not into techie stuff, reliable backup drives are a relevant and important gadget in my work as a travel writer and photographer. In this era of cameras and video cameras getting ever higher specifications, having a reliable external back up should be a priority for anyone.

The drive operates on USB 3.0 but is supplied with a with USB-C as well. You have an option between black or white and in either 1TB or 2TB capacities.

Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Touch Specifications

Design and Build

The market supply of HDDs are generally monotonous with variation of plastic and metal at best. Thus, this Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Touch woven polyester fabric design is refreshing and showed the designers ‘thinking out of the box’. The cloth is on the top side of the drive with the Seagate logo and an indicator light at the top. In your hand, it feels light-weight but well-made with the fabric contrasting with the plastic back. Very nice touch indeed.

Performance 

To analyse the “real world” performance of the Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Touch I used my customised PC with i7-4790 CPU 3.60Hz processor, to upload a recent vacation photo album with 12.2Gb size. It took 5m 51s to write the entire album with average write speed of 37.5MB/s while my Toshiba ITE HDD took 5m 19s with write speed of 39.5MB/s for the same file. It’s speedy enough and in my opinion, good performance as it is.

Conclusion 

This Backup Plus Ultra Touch is the latest in Seagate’s popular Backup Plus line. While some may scoff at the fabric design, those with a preference for fashionable gears to look stylish in a public setting, will gravitate towards to this trendy take on portable drive designs. I believe the availability of black or white version is ‘gender neutral’ for ease in decision making when buying. The Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Touch has password protection and 256-AES hardware encryption. There is also a 2-year data recovery service and an Adobe Creative Cloud – Photography Plan (2-month membership- to be redeemed by Jan 31, 2020).

I would recommend the 2TB version for those who shoot lots of videos so that they have more storage on tap. From a personal perspective, I like the tactile feel of the fabric as its definitely refreshing to have a portable drive that stands out in a field of mundane offerings.  

Many sincere thanks for coming along my gears reviews and I look forward to posting more in the near future. All pictures used in this review are copyrighted to Jensen Chua Photography and all rights reserved. While the product is sponsored, opinion expressed are non-prejudiced, factual, objective and that of the author.