Orico's BookDrive P10Plus offers magnetic phone attachment and 100W passthrough charging, but its sustained write speeds fall far below competing 10 Gbps SSDs at similar price points.
The external SSD market has become increasingly crowded with 10 Gbps drives offering similar performance at competitive prices. Orico's BookDrive P10Plus attempts to stand out with two unique features: a magnetic back for smartphone attachment and 100W power delivery passthrough charging. While these additions address specific use cases, the drive's fundamental performance reveals significant limitations that undermine its value proposition.
Design and Features
The BookDrive P10Plus features a silver aluminum shell measuring 69 x 100 x 12mm and weighing 78 grams. The magnetic back uses MagSafe-compatible technology, allowing direct attachment to iPhones and compatible Android devices. For phones without native magnetic support, Orico includes magnetic rings in the box.
The standout feature is the second USB-C port supporting 100W PD passthrough. This allows users to charge their phone or laptop through the drive while simultaneously using it for data transfer. The 5-inch 20 Gbps cable included in the box exceeds the drive's 10 Gbps capabilities, making it compatible with faster devices.
Performance Testing
Initial benchmarks painted a promising picture. In PCMark 10's Storage Benchmark, the drive scored 1221, placing it just behind the fastest 10 Gbps drives from Crucial and ahead of major brands like Samsung and SK hynix.
However, sustained write performance revealed the drive's Achilles' heel. After approximately 140 seconds of continuous writing, the drive's cache depleted and sustained write speeds plummeted to 60-80 MB/s, occasionally dipping below 50 MB/s. This performance level is slower than modern hard drives and even some flash drives.
For context, the Crucial X9 Pro maintained speeds above 900 MB/s throughout similar testing, making its sustained write performance approximately 14 times faster than the Orico drive. Even the Kingston DataTraveler Max, a flash drive, outperformed the BookDrive P10Plus in sustained writes.
Market Position and Pricing
At $184 for the 2TB model, the BookDrive P10Plus faces stiff competition. The Crucial X9 Pro, which lacks the magnetic attachment and passthrough charging but offers significantly better sustained performance, was priced at $172 for the 2TB version during testing.
The 512GB review unit likely has less cache than higher-capacity models, with Orico indicating the SLC cache is configured at roughly 20% of total capacity. However, this only delays the inevitable performance drop rather than solving the underlying issue of slow native flash performance.
Target Use Cases
The drive's performance characteristics suggest it's primarily suited for bursty workloads like smartphone video recording. The sustained write speeds should handle 4K/60Hz video capture without issues, but users performing large file transfers or continuous recording sessions will encounter significant bottlenecks.
The magnetic attachment and passthrough charging features make the most sense for smartphone users recording long-form video, where the single-cable solution provides convenience despite the performance limitations.
Conclusion
Orico's BookDrive P10Plus brings welcome innovation to the 10 Gbps external SSD space with its magnetic attachment and passthrough charging features. However, these additions cannot overcome the fundamental performance issues that make it difficult to recommend over competing drives that offer better sustained performance at similar or lower price points.
The drive represents an interesting experiment in feature differentiation, but ultimately demonstrates that unique features cannot compensate for core performance deficiencies in a market where basic functionality has become commoditized.
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