This metal edition has a slight price premium over the plastic one, and whether that is worth it is up to you. I think it is, but I'd imagine it will be similar to the plastic enclosure in just about every way.
First off, the drive is formatted for Windows. This would be readable on a Mac, but not writable. If you re-format it to exFAT, you can read/write on Windows and OSX without issue. This is what I've done and the drive is usable on both operating systems. It would almost certainly work in Linux using any file system (more on this later). You can also format to the Mac HFS+ system, but you lose some compatibility.
The drive comes with a software suite, which I really wasn't too interested in. One thing I did want is the encryption, as I tend to take external drives with me on travel. There is some software for that, but it does appear to be limited to setting it up and doesn't appear to be needed on an ongoing basis just to use the drive. There's an option in that software to automatically unlock on your main device, which is convenient as using this at home, the encryption is something that can get in the way as you don't really need it in a trusted environment.
Now, I thought the encryption would be of some use, but I really expected it to be a Windows-only feature, but I'm happy to say that it is not. I have the drive formatted in exFAT with encryption enabled, and it works across both operating systems. On my Macbook, I enter the password to unlock it, as they're both mobile devices and I want the drive to stay encrypted in case both are stolen together. Reads and writes with the encryption work across Windows and OSX using exFAT formatting. That definitely exceeded my expectations as the expectation was that I wouldn't be able to reliably use the encryption across platforms. One thing to note is that there is no support for Linux with the encryption. I never expected that, but it's something to be aware of. I'm over it, but I would prefer to have better support for Linux.
As to the performance, the drive is speedy enough. I get around 100MB/s with encryption. It supposedly has hardware-based encryption, and that seems to keep up with the drive, de-crypting and encrypting without a performance hit. As to whether you can rip this open and put it in your PS4...I doubt it. External drives now appear to have the bridge chip for USB on the drive itself (they are not USB native like many conclude). This saves money as well as enables shorter length on the cases. The internal and external drives are also different markets, so it doesn't surprise me that there are barriers with buying externals and trying to make them internal.
The looks? Pretty nice. It should be noted that the larger capacity models are thicker than the lower capacity, likely as the bigger drives are usually 13mm high whereas the smaller ones are 7-9mm. You'll see this in the images, but it's something to be aware of. The bottom is plastic, which is understood. The 'feet' are rubber to preven the drive from sliding around.
As to reliability, so far so good, but no device is good enough to trust with a sole copy of something important. It's really best you not learn that lesson the hard way.
| Hard Drive | 1 TB External |
|---|---|
| Number of USB 3.0 Ports | 1 |
