Silicon Power Armor A60 Review : Shock Proof and Water Resistant Portable Hard Drive

As a technology blogger who's now starting to create more video content in various locations around the country for Youtube, having a reliable portable hard drive that has a large storage space, rugged yet lightweight build, and stylish design is important to me.

If there's one portable hard drive model that meets all of my requirements currently, it would have to be the Silicon Power Armor A60 2TB variant, which our friends the Taiwanese company sent me last month.

This shock proof and water resistant device has all of the features that I'm looking -- and what's even more amazing is that it's quite affordable.

Here in the Philippines, you can get the Silicon Power Armor A60 2TB version for PHP 5,995 at Lazada while the 1TB variant goes for just PHP 3,995, which is a very good price for a portable hard drive that's protected against the elements.

This is how the official packaging looks.

As shown in the box, this award-winning model is scratch-resistant, shockproof, water-resistant, and comes with up to three years of warranty! Yup, you read that correctly: Three years!

These are the items you'll find inside the pack:

The included user manual is pretty generic. But I guess it's alright considering that using a portable hard drive isn't really all that complicated.

Let's take a closer look at the unit's design and build through these images of the actual device, which has dimensions of 138.5 x 85.9 x 23.2 mm and weighs around 228 grams.

The Armor A60 flaunts a scratch-resistant textured face with a criss-cross pattern that I find quite attractive.

At the bottom, the device has two strips of silicone serving as feet, which provide traction or added friction when you place the unit on a table.

The sides of Armor A60 is also lined with this neon silicone band that doesn't only serve as an eye-catching design accent but also absorbs impact from accidental drops and bumps.

This exterior feature along with the overall durable build of the device allowed it pass MIL-STD-810G tests, which supposedly includes a drop on a wooden floor from a height of 4 feet and immersion in water.

I've personally tried dropping Armor A60 on a wooden floor from a height of 1.5 meters and files remained intact and not corrupted. I can guarantee that this model is indeed shock-proof.

One small section of the silicone lining opens up to reveal Armor A60's USB 3.1 port through which file transfers are facilitated.

Silicon Power had included a free USB 3.1 Gen 1 to USB 3.1 connector cable that can be attached to the side of the device through a groove. I kind of wish this cable was longer but I guess that would have make it less convenient to carry along with the portable hard drive.

Connecting Armor A60 to my laptop for the first time, I saw that my 2TB model actually offers 1.81TB of storage space.

I also tried running CrystalDiskMark 6.0.1 Test on this portable hard drive and I got these rather decent results:

The read speed is 137.3 Mbps while the write speed is 139.3 Mbps. These are not the fastest speeds I've seen from a portable hard drive but the numbers are definitely not bad.

You can connect the Silicon Power Armor A60 to any desktop or notebook running Windows XP, 7, 8, 8.1 and Windows 10 as well as Mac OS X 10.5 or later, and Linux 2.6.31 or later.

You may also download the company's SPWidget Back-Up and Security software, which you can use for transferring files more securely. However, you don't really need it to start using the device because it's plug and play.

All things considered, I highly recommend the Silicon Power Armor A60 2TB version for students, young and seasoned professions, and content creators like me who travel a lot and live extreme. This is definitely a reliable portable hard drive that's tough enough to can keep up with your fast-paced, on-the-go lifestyle.