The drive is brand new and has the latest firmware installed. Let’s start our tests. The AJA System test, reports around 142MB/sec reading/writing performance with the Toshiba Canvio Flex 1TB.

The CrystalDiskMark software also offers a good indication of the drive's possible performance. The drive seems to introduce around 150MB/sec reading/writing speed with sequential files, while random 4K speed isn't high, something that was expected from a 5400rpm HDD.

The ATTO Disk benchmark gives us more details with different file sizes and something strange happens with low writing speeds at an 8MB file size:

while the ATTO Disk Benchmark didn't show high writing performance as well.

Enabling the Write Cache policy will further improve performance

While again the 64MB writing block seems to perform low.

Using life real testing, writing performance is very stable around 148MB/s when writing single files with no slowdowns:

Working temperatures are also great, no issue here with a max around 39 Celsius under constant load.

- Conclusion

The Toshiba Canvio Flex series is a nice solution for users who wish for external-portable HDDs with low weight, great price, and good performance. The low weight and dimensions of this product make it truly portable and easy to carry around. The retail price for 1TB is around 55 Euro, while 2TB (78 Euro) and 4TB (120 Euro) are also offered for increased storage capacity, in case you need it. At the retail package, two cables are provided, either with a normal TypeA or TypeC connection for a truly universal product.

Toshiba Canvio Flex doesn't disappoint at its performance, with great reading/writing sequential speeds (around 150MB/Sec), while random 4K isn't great, however, remember we are talking about a HDD here, not SSD/NVME, so the low 4K reading/writing is acceptable. The 5400rpm speed also offers a very low noise level and very good working temperatures even at full load. The product comes with 3 years of warranty which is also nice to have. We hope in the future Toshiba will move away from the MicroB to TypeA/C idea and offer a direct TypeC connector for all their external solutions to carry one cable for all your portable devices. Lastly, the device due to its exFAT file system is compatible with Windows, MAC and even Android devices so don't worry, you have to use it on all devices you might have around, great product with a great price as well, and good work from Toshiba.