Final Thoughts
Well first off I love super-fast portable storage. It makes transferring files across multiple systems so easy! On top of that little drives like these are great for portable editing drives for both photo and video. Lexar’s SL200 is small, pocketable, comes with both a Type-A and Type-C cable, and even offers 256-bit AES encryption. The speed of the drive is what you would expect from a USB 3.2 gen 1 drive and is quite an upgrade from a normal USB flash drive.
So you would think there really is nothing not to like about this drive, then we get to the price which is $159.99. That is only $10 less than Lexar’s own SL100 Pro drive which is twice the speed. Why would you not spend the extra $10 to get twice the speed? I don’t know if this is Lexar thinking people will buy the SL200 instead of the SL100 Pro because they don’t have USB 3.2 gen 2? All of these drives are backwards compatible with slower USB ports so the extra $10 is worth a faster drive and future-proofing for when you might have a system with USB 3.2 gen 2. Lexar is not the only one doing this, the Samsung T5 (USB 3.2 gen 1) is currently $139.99, while the T7 (USB 3.2 gen 2) is $159.99.
Many 1TB USB 3.2 gen 2 drives are around the same price as the SL200 including the Sabrent Rocket Nano ($158.99), HP P700 ($149.99), and ADATA SE800 ($129.99). So it is really hard to recommend this drive over those or Lexar’s own SL100 Pro, which is only $10 more. Overall ThinkComputers gives the Lexar SL200 Portable Solid State Drive a 7 out of 10 score.
Pros:
– Great speeds for a USB 3.2 gen 1 drive
– Small and compact
– Included software and 256-bit AES encryption
– Ready for PC and Mac out of the box
– Includes both a Type-A and Type-C cable
Cons:
– Priced only $10 cheaper than Lexar’s USB 3.2 gen 2 drive
– The same price as many other USB 3.2 gen 2 drives
