Pros: Compact
Well desiged

Cons: Durability
Poor customer service

Other Thoughts: Died just out of warranty of New Egg, now I have to deal with Western Digital. Poor customer service.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Alexander, we appreciate your feedback and apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced with the Western Digital My Passport Ultra, Western Digital is striving to provide World Class Service to all of our customer and we assure you that this is not the typical behavior of the drive. We assure you that all of our drives go into extensive tests before they are shipped to the reseller.
We also like to extend our apologies for the poor customer experience you received; please note that this is not the service we strive to provide, please allow us the opportunity to correct this issue for you, resulting in a positive resolution to your concern. Please contact us at (800) 275-4932, or via our support website at: https://wdsupport.wdc.com/sfdc/case.aspx.
Please indicate within the online case creation or with the first support agent you speak with, that you are responding to a Newegg review, so we route you and your information to the correct team members.

Pros: This is a very small drive. It's sleek looking, if you like the aluminum chassis. It's USB 3.0 and benchmarked faster than the last couple external drives I've tested. Testing on USB 2.0 it was only marginally faster than other drives I've tested.

It's extremely portable - small and very light. And it's powered by the USB cable.

It's an external hard drive, so as long as it works there's not a lot of things that can really be said. But this gets high marks in my book for its portability and relative speed.

Tested using Crystal Disk Mark v 3.0.2
Here's my USB3 results:
Sequential Read : 114.686 MB/s
Sequential Write : 114.174 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 44.781 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 61.231 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 0.564 MB/s [ 137.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 1.427 MB/s [ 348.4 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 0.606 MB/s [ 147.9 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 1.446 MB/s [ 352.9 IOPS]

And the USB 2.0 results:
Sequential Read : 36.316 MB/s
Sequential Write : 34.806 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 22.704 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 28.919 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 0.539 MB/s [ 131.6 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 1.374 MB/s [ 335.5 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 0.533 MB/s [ 130.1 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 1.389 MB/s [ 339.1 IOPS]

Cons: The drive is 5400 RPMs. The cable is short, around a foot and a half, maybe less.

Neither of these are big issues to me. While it was a real pain plugging in the back of my desktop, this drive is built for portability So it's most likely to be used with my laptop or tablet.

Other Thoughts: If you need 1TB in your pocket, this may be the drive for you. It's about twice as thick as my phone and a little wider, but not as long. It could easily replace a couple of USB thumb drives while requiring only slightly more space.

As a 5400 rpm, it sacrifices some speed. But it should be priced accordingly and in return provides an extremely compact and classy package, high in reliability while still benefiting from a fast USB 3 connection.

Pros: Nice looking drive I like the metal chassis, portable, functional and has some WD tools automatically installed. It offers password protection of your data which is a good bonus. You can also set it up to automatically authenticate with user PC login so you don't have to enter a password each time.

You can still access the data with the password from a windows device that does not have the WD software installed.

USB 3.0, and 3.0 speeds are nice. I was getting 105.3 read and 105.1 write.

Overall nice size, setup and functionality so I would recommend it. Just know that you will get much faster speeds using the USB 3.0.

Cons: I personally found the box a little hard to get the drive out of, but the drive did seem to be protected.

I found the drive to be a bit slow when using with USB 2.0. I have been getting speeds of 37 Read and 36 Write when on USB 2. (tested on multiple computers and USB ports)

The cable is fairly short, so you will not have a lot of distance, however this is not uncommon for portable devices like this.

Other Thoughts: I don't have a MAC, so i'm unable to provide details on using the device with Apple products.

Pros: The hard drive itself looks and feels fantastic being encased in a aluminium shell with only the bottom being covered by hard plastic. Those looking for premium build quality/materials in their products will most definitely fall in love with the looks of this drive.

The hard drive itself is ready to be used instantly upon plugging into a USB 3.0 or 2.0 port, and comes included with various easy to use software features in a single program. (SMART checks, performance diagnostics, sleep timers, and drive erase) The included encryptions take only seconds to setup. The WD SmartWare Pro also offers an optional, automatic cloud backup of your important data.

Having used the drive for about a week now, and having kept it running when not needed, it has yet to get warm and has remained quiet throughout its operations.

The 3 year warranty ensures that should something unforeseen happen to your drive, WD will replace it.

The MSRP is fairly competitive, and a fantastic bargain if found onsale.

Cons: The short USB cable doesn't give you much room to work with.

While not "slow", a 7200 RPM drive would've sped up file transfers a considerable amount.

Oddly no HDD firmware updater in the software.

Other Thoughts: I'm not going to post benchmarks as others have already done so and I've obtained similar speeds, but this drive performs great for everyday task. My only main gripe is with the short USB cable. The firmware and RPM of the hdd is just a personal preference that most users will not mind. Overall it's a great product that I can easily recommend.

Pros: USB 3.0 means that performance is good - more than sufficient for a portable HDD (see "other thoughts" for the numbers).

Price is good for a 1TB external HDD

The drive's build quality is very good, and it really does look nice aesthetically. The drive's looks are clearly the selling point, and if they matter to you, you can consider this a 5/5 option and probably the best on the market right now.

3-year warranty is great, and I've always had good experiences personally with WD's warranty service.

Basic encryption is a nice feature, and cloud storage will be useful to some folks (though I personally try not to back up data to the cloud for privacy reasons).

Drive runs cool and is silent when placed on a firm surface (you can hear it spin if you pick it up in your hand while transferring data, though)

Cons: I'd love to see the use of a 7200 RPM drive instead of the 5400 RPM drive used here, in order to achieve even better performance that would be more comparable to a modern desktop HDD.

The encryption options here are quite basic. While I imagine it's enough for the vast majority of users, if you are concerned about serious encryption on your data, you may want to look elsewhere.

While not a specific con, I didn't find anything other than aesthetics that really made this drive stand out from the crowd (and the 1TB external HDD market is quite crowded). As such, I'm only rating this drive 4/5 eggs.

Other Thoughts: This is a competent 1TB external HDD for portable use that happens to also have great aesthetics. If you care about how your portable HDD looks, this is the drive for you. If looks don't matter to you, this is just one of many competent options on the market, and doesn't really stand out in any way. If looks DO matter to you, then this is one of the best options you have.

Performance #s from CrystalDisk Mark:
----------------------------------------------------
Sequential Read : 117.238 MB/s
Sequential Write : 116.963 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 42.583 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 57.252 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 0.516 MB/s [125.9 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 1.372 MB/s [334.9 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 0.578 MB/s [141.2 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 1.401 MB/s [342.1 IOPS]

Pros: Easy to use and instant hardware encryption with provided software in the HDD. Only password is needed and the user is able to auto unlock. Therefore speed is not affected by encryption.

Sequential Read : 117.553 MB/s
Sequential Write : 112.156 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 46.757 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 83.180 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 0.635 MB/s [ 155.1 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 2.215 MB/s [ 540.9 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 0.773 MB/s [ 188.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 2.272 MB/s [ 554.7 IOPS]

The drive is sturdy and has a modern look to it.
Able to be instantly upgraded to WD SmartWare Pro.
Product registration process was easy and built into the utilities.
Drop-Box login was also seamlessly built into the utility.
The software setup was easy as only a single EXE file was enough.

Cons: Does not support BitLocker encryption as speed is extremely slow..
There is no firmware updater utility as with all HDD's.
Even though the HDD uses Advanced Format and NCQ, the drive itself is over a year old and is only SATAII with 5400RPM. The buffer is only 8MB.
The drive was formatted with MBR and not GPT.
The USB cable is fairly short about 20".
No specs in user manual and detailed specs not included.

Other Thoughts: The external enclosure cannot be propped open. I would use it exactly as it is intended for, sort of like a flash drive. It looks like SATA connection is impossible with this drive. The little reset hole by the USB port did not work when the drive is not connected or powered on. This is not a slim 2.5" drive. The price is a little expensive for what you get. I would say it is lot better or versatile for the end user if this had an SSD inside.