JetDrive Lite 330 expansion card adds 1 TB storage to the MacBook Pro

Transcend's new storage solution for MacBook Pro gives users much more space in a compact design that fits neatly into the SD card slot.

Many buyers of Apple's latest pro laptops are faced with the dilemma of needing more storage for their workflows, yet believe that Apple's storage upgrades are too expensive. Transcend's new 1 TB JetDrive Lite 330 is a perfect solution.

The new expansion card by Transcend, fits into the SD card slot of the current 2021 MacBook Pro, as well as with all MacBook Pro with Retina display models. For added durability, it sits flush with the side of the laptop chassis. The Lite 330 is resistant to water, dust, and shock.

This retains the laptop's portability while adding much-needed space for work and play.

The lesser-used SD card slot for certain users can now be used to juice up the storage space of their mission-critical laptop, all the while leaving important HDMI and Thunderbolt ports for their productivity needs.

The 1 TB JetDrive Lite 330 offers read speeds of up to 95 MB/s and write speeds of up to 75 MB/s so project files and documents are quickly saved and retrieved.

Best of all, it comes with five years of limited warranty.

It is available from Amazon for $249.99 It is also available in 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB capacities.

7 Comments

rob53 13 Years · 3316 comments

About 2 years ago

Kinda slow R/W speeds. Yes it’s small but even a simple USB-C external drive is 10x the speed.

Clarus 5 Years · 49 comments

AppleInsider said:

The 1 TB JetDrive Lite 330 offers read speeds of up to 95 MB/s and write speeds of up to 75 MB/s so project files and documents are quickly saved and retrieved.

No…speeds of up to 95 MB/s read 75 MB/s write means project files and documents are very slowly saved and retrieved. That’s the speed of a 20-year-old hard drive!

Now, I’m actually all for this type of expansion and might pick up a 256GB or 512GB. But only for files where fast read/write aren’t critical, like Word docs or a huge library of MP3/AAC files, music samples, that kind of thing. It’s a great expansion option as long as you go in with full awareness of the performance limitations: The speeds of this Jet Drive are as low as 60 times slower than the MacBook Pro M1 Pro/Max internal storage speeds. If the work you do needs the speed of Mac internal SSDs, don’t put those files on this Jet Drive.

It is disappointing that AppleInsider totally let that slide, and appears to have simply reprinted the marketing copy.

jdw 18 Years · 1457 comments

Who in their right mind wrote "quickly saved and retrieved"?

And along those lines...

Who in their right mind at Apple put an SD card reader in there which wasn't top notch in terms of transfer speeds. Apple should have put the fastest full sized SD card reader in there that is currently available. What they used is only "half way decent." Fine and wonderfully appreciated for camera transfers, but for supplementary storage? No. I hate to think about the negative side too much, but could it be that Apple deliberately put a lackluster performing SD card reader in there so as to thwart widespread use of SD cards as supplementary storage, thereby driving more buyers to purchase larger internal storage from Apple? It's not outside the realm of the reasonable, if you think about it, but it is unfortunate if true. And I say all this as a big fan of the SD card slot who hated the fact Apple removed it in previous notebooks. Glad to have it back, but more speed would have been an added delight.

crowley 15 Years · 10431 comments

Yeah, that “quickly” is unnecessary and stands out like a sore thumb.

What this article actually says is Apple put in a slow SD card reader. The entire article is a slap against Apple’s choice of hardware.

Does this card reader provide enough speed for current camera cards? I presume that’s what Apple intended it be used for, not as a storage disk reader.