Orico PSSD CN300 – The portable terabyte

If a USB stick is too slow and an external hard drive is too big and heavy, an external SSD can be a sensible alternative. Orico offers such an alternative with the PSSD CN300, which promises extensive utilization of the SATA 3 bandwidth according to the spec sheet and provides it via a USB-C port. Buyers can choose between capacities of 250, 500 and 1,000 GB as well as between three color variants: white, pink and light green.

Today, we are testing the PSSD CN300 with one terabyte of storage and in white. How the storage medium, which is currently available in stores for Price not available *, performs in practice will be shown in our following report.

Specifications

Scope of delivery & Workmanship

With the CN300, as with the GV100 we tested, Orico relies on a blue-and-white printed cardboard box containing brief instructions and the connection cable. In our case, two 20 cm long, double-sided USB-C cables were included, but according to the instructions, this was apparently an oversight: Actually, only one should be included. An additional USB-A to USB-C cable, like in the GV100, is unfortunately not included in the GCN300.

Inside, Orico again uses a controller from JMicron: the JMS580. This offers a USB 3.1 Gen 2 interface with a maximum of 10 GBit/s on the outside, while the SSD is controlled with a SATA interface. The maximum data rate is thus in the usual range: Orico speaks of “almost 540 MB/s”. Meanwhile, there is no information about the 3D NAND used.

The entire technology is housed in a plastic case, which can probably be called extravagant. The variant we tested is still the plainest, alternatively the color combinations green-light green-orange, pink-pink-light blue and purple-light green-orange are available.

The build quality of the CN300 is good: Haptically, the plastic is flawless, the case is solidly built and it feels good in the hand. The individual segments are not quite parallel on our SSD, which can be seen on closer inspection – but this should hardly be noticeable in everyday use.

Performance

When it comes to performance, the CN300 shows two sides of itself compared to other external SSDs we’ve tested. The CN300 comes closest to Orico’s advertised value of “nearly 540 MB/s” in the AS-SSD benchmark – here it achieves 515.73 MB/s in read.

However, the CN300 cannot really hold its own in the overall benchmark score: It is our taillight so far. The same is true for the read and write speeds of 4K sectors in CrystalDiskMark.

In other synthetic tests, the picture again looks quite different: In the HD Tune, the CN300 did very well, and in the access times as well as in the AS-SSD copy benchmark, it is enough for a placement in the middle. The performance is also good in practical use, when copying data: The SSD was able to transfer four gigabytes of music in around seven seconds.

Conclusion

With the PSSD CN300, Orico offers an external storage medium that scores very well in many performance areas, but falls behind in some. The latter is especially true for the performance rates in random read and write, but these are probably secondary for an external storage medium in many cases. The sequential performance rates are more important for copying processes, and the CN300 doesn’t reach SATA highs here, but it can at least fully utilize the built-in interface in reading, sometimes.

Whether the CN300 is really recommendable with this is probably primarily due to the price; because this varies greatly. If you combine a cheap 1 TB SATA SSD with an external case, you will currently end up with about 120 Euros. If you can find the CN300 for this, or better yet a lower price, it is worth considering. Currently it is available for Price not available *.