Seagate One Touch SSD 

Seagate knows that consumer interest in portable SSDs is growing, and so its portfolio has also expanded. We have with us for review today the new Seagate One Touch SSD, which is relatively affordable and quite stylish. It's positioned as a tech lifestyle device, and targets people who don't necessarily need the best possible speed but are looking for something better than a typical portable hard drive.

For anyone who hasn't tried an SSD before, the differences compared to a hard drive will be stark and surprising. They're potentially multiple times faster than hard drives, but much lighter, smaller, easier to carry, and more reliable. Many people are happy to spend good money for these advantages.

Seagate One Touch SSD (1TB) design and features

Seagate is definitely focusing on design with this model. The company has gone for a credit-card shape, though despite claims that this device can be slipped into a wallet, it's much too thick for that. In fact, this drive is almost exactly the same size as the very popular Samsung SSD T5, though very different in design.

There's a distinctive textured fabric panel on the top, and a cloth tab with the Seagate logo on one side. The 1TB version of this SSD is available only in white and black, but if you choose the 500GB version, there are special editions with blue, green, red, or grey camouflage prints. Additional artist editions for both capacities are shown on Seagate's US website though these don't appear to be available here, and there's the possibility of more designs coming out in the future.

For a device that's positioned as modern and fashionable, we're quite surprised to see an old Micro-USB 3.0 port on the back, like most external hard drives still use. This isn't as convenient as a USB Type-C Port, which we'd expect on an SSD. Seagate also doesn't include a Type-C cable or adapter, so those with sleek Type-C-only laptops will need to buy an adapter of their own

Asus VivoBook S15 (S532F) WithScreenPad  

Asus took us quite by surprise when it introduced the quirky and unique ScreenPad on its flagship 2018 laptops, the ZenBook Pro 14 and ZenBook Pro 15. The company effectively replaced the standard trackpads on these laptops with fully interactive touchscreens. The idea was to retain all the functionality of a standard trackpad but also open up completely new ways to use a laptop. We had a lot of thoughts about the concept and execution of the ScreenPad idea – not all positive. While there was a lot of potential, it seemed as though Asus had failed to strike the right balance between usability and innovation.

We now have some new laptops with the second-gen ScreenPad, which Asus says has been refined and focused. The concept has also been democratised, and can now be found on mainstream VivoBook as well as premium ZenBook laptops. This could be a good thing, giving Asus a unique and attractive selling point in the crowded market – but it could also backfire, confusing users and making everything more difficult.