Introduction

HP, aka Hewlett Packard, is one of the most well-know tech companies in the world. They produce nearly every product you can think of: laptops, desktops, printers, enterprise hardware, and solid-state drives.

We've previously reviewed the HP EX950 M.2 NVMe SSD, which impressed with outstanding performance and high transfer rates. Today's review is for the HP P700 Portable SSD, which is based on similar components, promising high-performance on the go.



The HP P700 is actually produced by HP business partner BIWIN Storage, a large Chinese OEM for SSD solutions with 25 years of experience in the storage and microelectronics business. They were granted authorization from HP to produce SSDs in their name. Internally, the HP P700 is built using a Silicon Motion SM2263EN controller and 64-layer TLC flash from Intel/Micron. Unlike most portable SSDs, the P700 does include a DRAM cache chip, which should help with performance.

HP's P700 Portable SSD uses the USB 3.1 Gen2 interface to support transfer rates of up to 1 GB/s, which can be a game changer if you have to copy a lot of data. Since the P700 has no moving parts, it is much more resilient to shock than a traditional HDD and does not have the seek-time bottleneck present on all hard drives.

We review the HP P700 in the 1 TB variant, which retails for $175, but is also available in capacities of 256 GB ($70) and 512 GB ($105). Warranty is set to three years for all these models.

Package and Contents

Inside the package you will find the SSD itself, a USB Type-C to Type-A cable, and an adapter to convert USB-Type C to Type-A.

The Drive

The HP P700 uses a black metal casing, which looks very clean and sleek. In the first photo, the HP logo and "Portable SSD P700" text are only barely visible, so I took a second photo under different lighting conditions.


The back has a sticker showing the product name, and a bar code.


A single USB-C port lets you connect to the drive. Unlike many other portable SSDs, the HP P700 has no activity LED, which is quite a useful visual indicator for when a transfer is finished or data is accessed.