Kingston DataTraveler 16GB Flash Drive Review

Chris Hadley / 10 years ago

Final Thoughts

Pricing

USB2.0 flash drives are one of the cheapest flash-based storage devices that we can buy today. Whilst the microDuo that we’ve looked at here is only 16GB in size, the nature of its OTG capability has pushed the price per GB of storage up a shade, however it is still relatively cheap costing only $13.99 through Newegg.com in the States and under £7 at Scan Computers.

Kingston_microDuo_Price_chart

Overview

It’s obvious to say that Kingston’s microDuo flash drive is not going to be breaking any USB transfer speeds any time soon, but when we look at the wider picture and the market that this drive is aimed at, performance is not really that important. Being able to expand the storage available to your mobile device is somewhat more important than it was a few years ago and whilst there are a number of wireless solutions on the market to choose from, they’re not exactly plug-and-play, let alone cheap to buy in comparison to a flash drive.

Compatibility on some devices at this moment in time will be a bit of an issue for some users, even with some of those that recently came to market. Where devices are not compatible with OTG drive out of the box, some solace can be taken that there are third-party apps available through Google Play that with give some handsets and tablets the ability to read and write to OTG flash drives and media.

As far as performance is concerned, the microDuo is respectable for what it is and considering the fact that smart phones and tablets have not quite yet hopped on to the USB3.0 bandwagon, what the drive is able to offer for now is more than enough. After connecting the microDuo to my Nexus 5 (which does require a third-party app at this moment) and Lenovo’s S6000 tablet, I was able to establish through a couple of benchmarks that speeds of 9MB/s read and 7MB/s write are to be expected, which for watching films, listening to music or reading files is more than enough.

All-in-all the microDuo is not a bad start for a OTG compatible device and whilst there are cables available that allow you to connect any USB storage device to your Android device, this is a simple plug and play solution that does exactly as it says on the tin (or pack as the case may be)

Pros

USB-OTG connectivity
Inexpensive to buy
5 year warranty
Quick and easy way to copy files between desktop and mobile systems

Cons

A cord or loop would be a huge benefit for attaching to a set of keys
Older USB2.0 speeds

“USB-OTG is quickly becoming the new way to transfer files and media between desktop and mobile devices as well as expanding the storage space on tablets and smart phones in a matter of seconds. Kingston’s DataTraveler microDuo is just a start of things to come as far as mobile storage goes and as compatibility grows, I’d soon expect we’ll be seeing bigger and faster OTG drives hitting the market place.”