USB Flash Drive Roundup 2009 Accessories   Page 1

Reviewer: RWL Staff Article Publish Date: 4/27/2009

 

 

 

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION

 

 

 

 

 

 

              Lately no matter where i go i see people carrying USB Flash Drives with them and most of them even have them attached to their keychain to make it impossible to forget. Even i always carry a USB Flash Drive with me on my keychain and since before i get one i always check its specifications i guess some people do the same prior to making their choice. However most people don't care while those who care only have the official specifications to base their choice on. This is where we come in with the second out of 5 in total roundups we have scheduled for 2009 and so with us today we have 11 of the best USB Flash Drives in the market made by 10 of the top companies in the field. The goal of this roundup is not only to see which one is the fastest solution around but also which one is the best ( price / performance ) overall choice, which is the most durable unit and which one sports the highest build quality and although these are all great solutions i will be forced to leave a few units without a prize and believe me when i say that it is one of the hardest things to choose from a list like this one.

 

 

               So the USB Flash Drives with us today are made by OCZ, Corsair, Kingston, Walton Chaintech, Patriot, SanDisk, A-DATA, CSX, ATP,PQI, TakeMS in a variety of sizes from 8 to 32GB. I tried to get my hands on 16GB units alone to minimize any possible speed differences but some of the companies that take part in this roundup were unable to provide that specific size and so i had to widen the roundup specs. Still after all the tests and after talking with people from some of the companies i found no difference in speeds between 8 and 16GB drives but from 16 to 32GB some speed differences do exist and since there is a single 32GB drive in this roundup i ask of you to judge it with this information in mind. So the list of USB Flash Drives that will be participating in this roundup is the following:

 

 

- Walton Chaintech APOGEE 16GB
- OCZ ATV 32GB
- Corsair Flash Voyager 8GB
- SanDisk Cruzer Contour 16GB
- CSX Booster G4 16GB
- ATP Earthdrive 8GB
- Kingston HyperX 8GB
- PQI i161 8GB
- ATP Toughdrive Camo 8GB
- A-DATA XPG 16GB
- Patriot Xporter XT 16GB
- TakeMS Mem-Drive Colorline 16GB

 

 

               This is quite a long list and to be honest with you it wasn't easy for me to gather all of these from so many companies. Anyway let's head over to the main body of this roundup and see what each and every single one of these units is capable of in both terms of performance and appearance.