The name may sound a little overblown, but with its black brushed-metal exterior the Prestige looks and feels like a premium piece of kit. The power switch at the back is a nice touch, too – it’s a small thing, but with other manufacturers offering fiddly push-buttons or no power control at all, it contributes to the sense that this is high-quality hardware.
And the Prestige walks the walk when it comes to performance. In our large-file copy tests it was the fastest 1TB drive by a head. Although it couldn’t quite keep up with the Buffalo DriveStation in our small-file tests, it came a strong second for write speed, and didn’t disgrace itself when reading back the files, coming fourth in the field.
At 11c per gigabyte, the 1TB Prestige isn’t the cheapest option here. But Iomega’s backup suite and a year’s subscription to Trend Micro Internet Security extras sweeten the deal a little. The 2TB model is better value at $135 – 2TB is generally the sweet spot for pricing at the moment.
Overall, we feel the Prestige justifies its price with bags of class, a few nice extras and excellent performance, making it an appealing general-purpose drive.
