Introduction

Last year I bought my very first digital photo frame which didn't have much in terms of internal memory on which to store and display the many photographs I have taken over the years on my digital camera and had stored on my PC. What the Digi-frame did have though was a USB port and a quick look round on the internet and reading the reviews of the actual frame itself revealed that the solution to my problem of needing something to display my images was a USB drive. I'm not technically minded at all as I often mention in reviews so this was something new to me and after spending some time reading up about USB drives and the difference in their memory I looked on amazon for solution to my problem and settled for the subject of this review, the Flash Memory 4GB USB Drive and paid a little under £5.00 for it at the time.

Flash Drive

The actual drive itself is small and unassuming in size and came packaged blister-packed on a piece of cardboard. It weighs just 9 grams and as shown in the supplied picture is simply a USB connector attached to a rectangular piece of plastic complete with a moveable metal sleeve which acts as a protector. Although light in weight it feels quite robust to the touch and the protector moves with ease and fits into the USB ports on my computer with no problems whatsoever. I bought this specifically to store the digital images I had on my PC and connecting the Flash Drive to my computer was effortless with my PC recognising the hardware immediately on connection and within a couple of seconds I had the external drive as an additional source of memory available to me. Selecting the images on my computer and transferring them to the drive took little time with the 'drag and drop' function and the process of transferring my pictures was remarkably hassle free and a lot easier than I was anticipating. The transfer speed appeared quick to me but I have no experience of any other drives to compare this to and within a few minutes the hundreds of family photographs I had were stored onto this little drive and I was able to connect it to the USB port of my Digital photo frame which again recognised the drive immediately and began to display my pictures exactly as I wanted.

The software on the drive itself allowed me to view the images it stored and allowed me to make any changes or rotations that were needed and whilst I undoubtedly overestimated how much memory I actually needed (I said I was unfamiliar with these sort of things!) the process from start to finish was quick and easy. Further research has revealed that I could potentially store many thousands of digital images on this drive depending on the original mega-pixel resolution they were originally taken in and of course it could be used for other things including MP3 tracks and digital videos. For someone who was brand new to USB drives this proved itself to be straightforward and remarkably easy and whilst I have nothing to compare this to I can't imagine anything else offering anything better in terms of speed and efficiency. Both my home PC and digital photoframe recognised the hardware without issue and at no time did the Flash drive crash or lag, it simply did what I wanted it to do and for someone as 'green' as I am to this type of thing it gave me reassurance that I actually did know what I was doing after all.

Flash drives seem to come in many shapes and sizes and in all honesty I couldn't tell one apart from the other and the only reason I bought this one was because of its price. I paid a little under £5.00 for it and looking on amazon today it appears it's still available for the price I paid and has plenty of positive reviews written about it. I do like the fact that the protective metal sleeve covers the USB opening and would imagine that this makes it relatively safe for being transported around. I can't comment on how durable it actually is as I've never taken mine outside of my home but be assured that the build quality feels good and sufficiently strong enough to withstand a little bit of knocking around. For something as simple as this undoubtedly is I have no complaints whatsoever and for the price I paid I consider it to be something of a bargain. I'm still not all that technically minded but understand the principle of Flash drives in general and consider them to be an invaluable and convenient way of storing important data and almost one year on mine is still going strong and has been used frequently when I need to add or delete any photographs I have taken or want to remove.

Conclusion

All in all I have been impressed with mine and would certainly recommend this USB drive to anyone who is looking for one. It's never let me down, never crashed or become unresponsive and I have no complaints about this whatsoever. Five stars from me, there's no reason for me to deduct any stars from my rating and overall this Flash Memory USB drive gets the thumbs up from me.

Hopefully I have covered everything that anyone would need to know if contemplating buying this particular model, if there's anything I've missed please feel free to ask, I don't know much about these types of thing but I know that this has never let me down and is incredibly easy to use.

Thanks for reading my review, please note that this may appear on ciao under my username.