This small box that’s designed to connect to your TV, like the Roku LT, has a compact design to make it as unobtrusive as possible. The Freecom Mobile Drive Sq TV even comes with a TV cradle so you can hang it safely from the back of your TV out of sight, yet still have it easily accessible.

However, it performs a very different service to the Roku LT. It’s a portable external hard drive that, while small, boasts a big capacity – the version we tested had a huge 1TB of disk space, and the other version had 500GB.

Many smart TVs, such as the Sony KDL-26EX553, come with the ability to play media from attached USB drives, so you could add your entire media collection to the Freecom Mobile Drive Sq TV and have everything you wanted to watch or listen to right at your fingertips.

Some new TVs also come with the ability to record TV shows straight to an attached external drive, so if you have one of those then this is a great device to run alongside it.

Read speeds were a fast 104.96 MB/s, while write speeds were just a fraction slower, at 103.31MB/s. In our real world tests we were able to transfer a 364MB file in just four seconds.

Verdict

Even if you don’t have a USB-enabled TV, the Freecom Mobile Drive Sq TV 56156 is a very good external hard drive that is easy to carry around, and thanks to its USB 3.0 interface, it’s nice and speedy.