Teamgroup T-Create CLASSIC: 2 minute review
specification
interface: Thunderbolt 3 or USB 3.2 Gen 2
connector: USB Type-C
colour: Silver
drive: (1) NVMe SSDs
capacity: 1TB, 2TB, 4TB
Data transfer rate: Thunderbolt3 R/W Max 2700MB/s USB3.2 R/W Max 900MB/s
Size (LxWxH): 109.5mm×65.0mm×15.0mm
weight: 180g
operating system: macOS 10.12 or later (Time Machine compatible), Windows® 10 or later, Linux
Box contents: CLASSIC Drive, USB-C to USB-C Cable
guarantee: 5 year limited warranty
If you want the best external drive performance, choose a Thunderbolt connection over USB. With that choice, most always turn to the SanDisk Professional or OWC product line to provide that connectivity.
Teamgroup capped this particular ring with the T-Create Classic, a Thunderbolt and USB 3.2 compatible drive built to a very high standard.
As construction progresses, the Classic’s minimalist styling machined from solid aluminum approach is similar to what we’ve seen from other brands, but eschews the usual military clichés.
It keeps the inside of the SSD safe, but the enclosure isn’t particularly light, and the drive weighs 180g including cables.
There is no obvious way to disassemble this enclosure. If you find it, you should definitely void your warranty.
What we do know about the internals is that at the heart of this is an NVMe SSD, presumably of the PCIe 3.0 specification. Teamgroup sells his NVMe drives branded and could logically be one of them.
To avoid small capacities, the Classic comes in 1 TB, 2 TB, or 4 TB options, and the review was performed with 2 TB drives.
The drive is preformatted with the exFAT file system, eliminating the need to reformat the drive to be recognized by Microsoft Windows and Apple macOS.
Performance will vary significantly depending on the interface used (Thunderbolt or USB 3.2 Gen 2). Thunderbolt is significantly faster with up to 2700MB/s. USB 3.2 Gen 2 is closer to 1000MB/s, and ports with Gen 1 specs may only show 500MB/s.
So it’s only worth spending the paltry asking price for this hardware if you’re a general user of computers with Thunderbolt devices.
The T-Create Classic is a great example of a product that most people would choose if price wasn’t an issue. For business customers, the high price can be argued to justify the increased productivity and increased backup potential these days.
But for most home users, this is too costly to consider.
Teamgroup T-Create CLASSIC: Pricing and Availability
- how much does it cost? Starting at $320 / £450 for 2TB models
- When are you coming out? Available now
- where can i get it? Widely available from major online retailers in most regions.
For whatever strange reason, we’re seeing some external drive manufacturers drive prices up to crazy levels in Europe, and Teamgroup is joining the bandwagon.
While the 2TB and 4TB Classic are priced at $319.99 and $639.99 in the US, those numbers increase dramatically to £449.26 and £920.78 in the UK. Based on current exchange rates, these prices are approximately 180% of current US prices.
The 1TB version seems to be no longer available on Amazon, so maybe the smallest size drive has been discontinued.
A comparable product is the SanDisk Professional PRO-G40, which also offers Thunderbolt and USB compatibility, resilience, and high performance. The Classic is cheaper than the PRO-G40, but it’s also an expensive option.
The Glyph Atom is a good example, and you can get a Thunderbolt SSD for less than this. Alternatively, Envoy Pro FX is another option, but even more expensive in the US, but cheaper in the UK.
If you want to save a ton of money, Sabrent makes a Thunderbolt 3 NVMe enclosure for just $99 that lets you put a spare M.2 NVMe drive inside, but the top speed of that enclosure is lower than off-the-shelf solutions. will be late.
Team Group T-Create CLASSIC: Design
- simple design
- 1 cable
- LED indicator
While some customers prefer futuristic designs and take their cues from military hardware, T-Create Classic offers a very simple design with more functionality than aesthetics.
Most of the corners are rounded due to the milling of the aluminum housing, but the top and bottom edges of each edge are still sharp. Therefore, you don’t want to put this drive in a bag with your tablet or laptop as the screen or lid may get scratched during transport.
One end has the Thunderbolt 3 lettering and the other end has the USB-C port and the Thunderbolt and SuperSpeed USB 10Gbits logos.
A single 20 cm cable that works with both Thunderbolt and USB connections is included in the box, but assumes you have a USB-C port instead of the traditional USB-A. At this high price, it’s a mystery why Teamgroup couldn’t include a USB-C to USB-A cable. This is because the owner will always need this drive at some point.
On the underside are two rubber strips to prevent damage to the surface on which the Classic is placed, the drive capacity, and the team group’s branding, which contains a QR code to navigate to the company’s website.
There’s a T-Create logo on the top, a small hole through which the activity LED can be seen, and nothing else of note.
From a design standpoint, it could be argued that there isn’t much to the classic, and that its simplicity makes it less of an opportunity for customers to hate styling when purchasing.
Team Group T-Create CLASSIC: Features
- robust housing
- No software
- Up to 4TB of space
The T-Create Classic is durable, but otherwise it doesn’t have any special features.
A quick look at the promotional materials, however, doesn’t make any real claims about how robust this drive is. We presume it can, but no numbers were provided to support that conclusion. The sole and maximum liability of TEAMGROUP shall be to repair or replace the product or refund the money, at TEAMGROUP’s sole discretion.”
What we did notice was that the case gets hot when the drive is used. This indicates that there is a good thermal connection between the internal drives and the enclosure.
When the product arrived, Teamgroup was already formatted in exFAT and suitable for both Windows and Mac computers. However, you can reformat it to NTFS for Windows or APFS for Mac if you prefer. It’s a shame you can’t get software with this drive because it’s expensive.At least Mac users can get Time Machine compatibility.It would have been nice to have some syncing software for PC as well, but nothing Not provided.
Our review hardware had a capacity of 2 TB, but this drive can have up to 4 TB of storage space. This may look big by current SSD standards, but before the end of the year there are new NAND wafers ready to offer even greater capacities. So it’s nice to have 4TB as an option, but in a few years it won’t feel so big and 4TB drives will be significantly cheaper.
Team Group T-Create CLASSIC: Performance
- quickly cross thunderbolt
- slow over USB
- Software encryption only
To give the Classic the best chance to shine, we connected it to a Lenovo ThinkPad Z16 Gen 1 laptop and its USB 4.0/Thunderbolt port.
In this best-case scenario, using CrystalDiskMark 8.0.4, it returned a read speed of 3120MB/s and a write speed of 1838MB/s. Not-so-optimistic AJA benchmarks showed 2322MB/s reading and just 1432MB/s writing, which is still very fast by external drive performance standards.
The only small portable drive that was faster than this was the SanDisk PRO-G40, which was much faster to write, but slightly faster to read.
Compared to the performance of typical USB 3.2 Gen 2 drives around 1000MB/s, the Classic is much better at reading and writing over Thunderbolt.
When connected via USB, the interface becomes the limiting factor for file transfers.
The USB interface can operate in USB SuperSpeed and SuperSpeed+ modes. These represent the 5Gbit/s and 10Gbit/s channels specified in the current USB naming convention for USB 3.2 Gen 1 and USB 3.2 Gen 2.
We tested Classic in these modes, and oddly enough, read speed dropped more than write performance. The Gen 2 results were about 700MB/s read, but 1000MB/s write. I don’t understand why USB 3.2 Gen 2 is having trouble reading.
Moving to Gen 1 USB resulted in transfer speeds below 500MB/s in both directions.
Drives in Classic do not support hardware encryption, but you can use software encryption through solutions such as Microsoft BitLocker to protect against potential thieves of your drive’s contents.
Teamgroup always surprises us with products that exceed our expectations and Classic is definitely one of them.
The problem with T-Create Classic is that NAND wafers are about to scale significantly, but the cost per GB will probably drop dramatically. If buyer regret doesn’t matter, Classic is available now.
However, anyone looking to make a medium to long-term investment would be wise to consider the cheaper option and repurchase when higher capacity, cheaper drives come along.
The T-Create Classic is a great product, but it doesn’t offer much value in the short term.
Team Group T-Create CLASSIC: Report Card
| worth | Extremely expensive, especially in Europe | twenty five |
| design | Simple, portable and effective. | 4/5 |
| Features | Ideally supports USB-C alongside Thunderbolt | 3/5 |
| performance | Superior performance that surpasses PRO-G40. | 4/5 |
| total | Good drive, but not a bargain from a cost standpoint. | 4/5 |
Should I buy Teamgroup T-Create CLASSIC?
