Fastest Thunderbolt 3 Storage? LaCie 6 Big Review
The LaCie 6 Big an amazing piece of technology not only from a design standpoint, also from a technological one. All this awesomeness comes at a price. The LaCie 6 Big will rip a huge whole in your wallet. This Review will help you to decide whether LaCie’s stylish little cube is the right fit for you, or if you should check out other Solutions.
The unique Design
As I said in the beginning the Design of the Lacie 6 Big is pure eye candy. All of Lacie’s Devices are a work of art. They are designed by Neil Poulton and this an absolute game changer. Normally you want to hide away all your IT equipment. That’s not the case with Lacie’s Products.
But don’t be fooled by the LaCie 6 Big’s looks. This little cube has more to offer than just good looks. These days a lot of designers tend to create gear with a lot of plastic parts. Well not the 6 Big. This little fella throws 14 kilos into the ring. The weight of this device alone makes it special. The whole Body is made out of metal similar to Apples Unibody Design. All this weight benefits the noise level of the LaCie 6 Big. In my measurements I only picked up 37 dB. That’s just 3 dBs more than the LaCie 4TB USB-C Rugged External Hard Drive. This makes this Device extremely convenient and absolutely Desk worthy.
Only average Performance with Pictures?
After I compared the Drobo 5D3, QNAP TS-453BT3 and the Lacie 6 Big I noticed a few interesting performance differences. If you take a look at the Photo Archive Copy Performance, the Drobo 5D3 beats the other contestants easily. If you are a Photographer and you want an easy to use System, I absolutely can recommend the Drobo 5D3 for you.
Editing 4K Videos is finally fun
This changes immediately if you work with video files. The LaCie 6 Big obliterates its competitors. This performance plus speeds up your video edits significantly. I don’t need to wait for my renderings to catch up with my edit. I easily can throw three 4K 24fps streams from my Canon 5D Mark IV into Final Cut Pro on top of each other without any frame skips.
Possible other Solutions
Recently I reviewed the QNAP TS-453BT3 and the Drobo 5D3. Both devices come at a much lower price point and also offer Thunderbolt 3 connectivity. They focus on different customers than the LaCie 6 Big. So they could be a viable option if you are looking for something cheaper or you don’t that amount of performance.
Verdict
The LaCie 6 Big scored incredible 9800 Points in this review. This has a lot to do with it’s high Video IO Performance and the fact that you get 5 years of Data Rescue Services. The build quality of the 6 Big is impressive. Sure the Full Metal Body makes this build very heavy, but you also get an extremely quiet device through that extra weight. So if you are a Video Editor or you have huge amount of Data, the LaCie 6 Big has a lot to offer you and will without a doubt help you to increase your productivity.
If you liked this review and would like to support me, feel free to check out my Amazon Links for the Storage Device I mentioned above.
4 Responses
Hey Atti-Bear, thank you so much for these reviews. Can you clarify that you conducted all the Lacie 6Big tests using RAID 0? That should have a huge impact on the performance, but you get no file safety. Perhaps a more apples-to-apples test would be testing the performance of the Lacie at RAID 5. I’m wondering if I should go DROBO for my photography and LACIE for my video, or just stick to one system… and I definitely want performance AND safety. Thanks man, great work!
Hey Eric, thanks for your comment. Actually the Test with the Lacie 6 Big was conducted at RAID 5. Operating such a big system at RAID 0 would never be a good idea. You’d pretty much beg for data loss. I’m using the 6 Big as my daily driver, but don’t forget I’m focusing on video work. If you can afford it, it’s always nice to have dedicated solutions for your needs but if not, I’d rather recommend to go with the system that’s future proof for your work. Hope this helped a bit ☺️
THANK YOU so much for confirming that. Your in depth review and real-world comparison was the most helpful resource I found on the internet. In my workflow I’ve kept my photo and video projects separate — even when I’m doing photo+video work for the same client — and this performance comparison was just what I needed to see. I pulled the trigger on 2x Drobo 5D3s (5x14tb) for my photo work and a 6Big (6x14tb) for my video work. You have a new fan Atti Bear!
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Thanks for the post!
I see this is posted in 2018, has something new happened in 2020? Currently doing some research on ThunderBolt 3 drives for our blog.