Cruzer 2 4GB with U3: seems reliable enough
Written: Dec 17 '06 (Updated Dec 17 '06)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: I got it for $25 for 4GB. Middling performance
Cons: Casing feels structurally weak. Can be expensive. Middling performance especially on writes
The Bottom Line: At the price I got, it's a steal. Otherwise, a middling performance and there are better deals for your money if you don't mind noname brands
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| yusakugo's Full Review: SanDisk Cruzer® Micro (SDCZ6-4096-A10SDCZ4-40... |
Staples had a large sale on these unit about a month ago. The sale price was $59.98 and I got 3.5% sales tax for the area the Staples was located in. I used my Staples reward and my Staples Ink coupons to drop the price to a very nice $25. You can read my epinion "The Art of Buying... Getting your money's worth!".
Overall, after playing with the Cruzer Titanium U3 version, the regular Cruzer micro seems a bit on the weak side with its thin plastic casing. However, 4GB is 4GB and performance would make or break the grade.
Short Take
You can probably find no name brand 4GB drives for cheaper than the SanDisk version but SanDisk did put some thought into the design of this drive. The Cruzer design harks back for many years when SanDisk created a bulky but pocketable SD card reader/writer with a sliding USB connector. The Cruzer design makes it a one piece design with no caps to lose. It doesn't completely protect the drive and the USB connector from any insult like water but it does a decent job against physical damage.
The performance of the standard Cruzer micro drives are decent but not great.
Specs?
The dimensions of the Sandisk Cruzer Micro U3 are 7.94mm x 20.6mm x 57.15mm (DxWxL). It is of a thin enough profile to not block adjacent USB ports when plugged in. Note that the drive is slightly bigger than the Titanium version of these drives.
The Cruzer Micro U3 is a single piece design where there are no removable parts to speak of. There is no cover to lose with using the drive and so forth. The casing is a solid black plastic although it is concerning that there is a little bit of flex to the casing. The front of the unit has a sliding translucent white plastic nub that exposes the USB connector when slid to the open position. This translucent white plastic portion is also where the orange drive access LED is located. As stated the USB connector can be retracted into the casing although liquids and small particles can still get into the inside of the USB connector. There is a a small eyelet for a lanyard or small keyring attachment.
Unlike the Titantium version, SanDisk makes no guarantees on the speed of the Micro drive.
The Micro U3 comes in a blister pack with a neck strap/lanyard. The lanyard is much stronger than their previous lanyard accessory with older Cruzer models. You lose the clip that comes with the Titanium versions of the drive. Basically, that's the whole package.
Unlike the lanyard of the Cruzer titanium drive, the micro's lanyard attaches to the flash drive with thin filaments that in my experience broke within a few months. This is pretty much the standard lanyard used by many of the SanDisk flash drive products.
Durability
The Micro is nowhere near as tough as the Titanium version of the Cruzer drive. The plastic casing has a little bit of bend when I press on it. I would be careful where I put this drive... I wouldn't feel comfortable throwing it into a bag with heavy items like books in it.
Transfer Speed
350MB of data (two video files) took a little less than two minute to complete. HDTach (8mb zones) shows an average read speed of 12.2MB/sec, random access of 1.1 ms!, and a Burst Speed of 18.0MB/sec. On the long tests (32mb zones), there was no difference. Write speeds seemed to get close to 8MB/sec. All in all, not bad but not great performance.
Note that this above information was gathered from HDTach battery of tests and estimates based off transferring sets of 2 170-180MB videos files (.AVI, .MKV, and .OGG video files encoded via XViD, MPEG-4, or H.264 video encodes with high quality audio). Note that smaller files lead to slower read/write speeds for those files.
Note that the Cruzer Micro U3 seems a bit slower than the Titanium versions of the Cruzer drive especially in writing to the drive. The read/write speeds are impacted by size of the files, number of files being read/wrote, the speed of the flash chips, and the speed of the flash controller in the flash drive. In a very simplistic view, large files tend to stress the speed of the flash chips while small files tend to stress the speed and ability of the flash controller.
Storage
The U3 interface showed 3.88 GB on the drive although 3.77GB were available to my use.
U3
Currently the U3 interface on the Cruzer Micro U3 is compatible with Win 2000 SP4 and WinXP. The way I see it, U3 makes the USB drive more like an AutoPlay CD/DVD. It adds an icon to your taskbar and which gives you a menu of options on a Win 2000 SP4 and Win XP system when you plug in your U3 flash drive. It is almost like clicking on the Start button on the taskbar when you click on the U3 icon. If you aren't using these Operating Systems on your computer, U3 will not activate (as this time anyway) or be usable on those systems. The U3 system is suppose to allow U3 compatible programs to run off the flash drive to maintain that programs and data can be used at any computer (of the above operating systems) where the U3 flash drive is plugged in. Note that all U3 programs are quite small and are completely contained within the flash drive. Don't expect a U3 approved Microsoft Office to be coming out anytime soon (although OpenOffice I think was working on a U3 compatible version).
Already loaded into the Cruzer Micro are SKYPE video calling, AVAST antivirus, CruzerSync, and SignUp Shield password manager. Technically, U3 is advertised as a way to transport software that you can run on any computer that can utilize the U3 technology (i.e. Windows 2000 SP4 and above). The Sandisk website and the U3 interface allows you to download newer U3 compatible programs as they come available. The process of downloading and installing these programs to the Cruzer Titanium relatively painless. Note that not all the U3 programs are free and to date, there is not alot of U3 compatible programs available.
Warranty?
Insert states a paltry 2 year limited warranty.
Oddities
There are scattered various reports on the web on these drives failing. I've only used my drive for 1 month but the reports that I've seen show a handful of people had drive failures within 3 months. As for me, so far so good.
Final Word
Currently, Sandisk is selling the drives for $179.99 for 4GB. In reality, you can buy the drives at much cheaper prices. Staples regular price is $139.98. The smaller drives like the 2GB is often as low as $39.98 at Staples. For the price it is a decent drive although cheaper alternatives are out there especially if you are willing to buy no name brands. If durability is an issue, I would consider the Cruzer Titantium drives (I reviewed the 2GB version here) instead. The titanium drive is much tougher and performs a bit better than the standard Cruzer micro drives.
Recommended:
Yes
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yusakugo
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Member: Rich Go
Location: Somewhere in the NorthEast
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Losing Sleep and Lacking Time... sigh...
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