Founded in 1987, Kingston Technology is a world known memory leader. Headquartered in Fountain Valley, California and employing over 4,500 people, chances are you are already familiar with this enormous memory maker’s products line. The company grew out of a severe shortage of surface-mount memory chips in the tech market place in the late 1980’s.
During that time, their two founders John Tu and David Sun put their expertise at work and designed a new Single In-Line memory module (SIMM) that used readily available, older technology through-hole components. Today their product line surpasses over 2000 memory products; everything from computer workstations, high end servers, printers, digital cameras, and cell phones to everything else you could put your mind in to.
DataTraveler HyperX
The HyperX is Kingston’s top of the line high speed USB flash drive solution targeted towards the computer enthusiasts in order to give them the maximum muscle out of their flash storage.
With read speeds of 30MB/sec and write speeds of up to 20MB/sec the HyperX will definitely make some noise around the high end users seeking for optimal transfers. The drive measures a mere 2.76 x 0.88 x 0.44 (70.0mm x 22.4mm x 11.3mm) and spots an attractive black rubber grip texture along a blue metallic finish. A blue LED activity indicator is present on the top.
After a rapid using SiSoftware Sandra on my personal Sony Vaio CR series laptop powered by Windows Vista Home Premium we’ve achieved maximal write speed of 19.26MB/sec and 31.34MB/sec read speed. The test file was a compressed 500MB zip archive. Note that these results are almost identical to the company’s official claim.
It’s important to keep in mind that these results will vary from PC to PC depending of its hardware.
The HyperX comes in 2GB, 4GB and 8GB versions and is fully compatible with Windows 2000, XP, Vista (enhanced for Windows ReadyBoost), Mac OS 10+ and even Linux 2.6+
Having personally used USB drives over the past few years on daily basis, I must say I was quite excited to see the HyperX featuring a capless design where you don’t have to take any cap out in order to plug it in the computer’s USB port; simply roll the slider located on the side of the housing and the main USB connector comes out, the rest is all plug and play. This is a great design improvement over the past; especially if you are someone like me who used to loose these caps every week.
After doing a little price search on the web, we found the 2GB version for as low as 40.00$, the 4GB for around 70$ and the 8GB version for around 150$. Taking in mind this product’s great overall performance I can say that pricing of the HyperX drive is interesting. Any computer enthusiast seeking an optimal portable memory solution should take a closer look at the HyperX from Kingston Technology before making his purchase.
DataTraveler 400
The DataTraveler 400 is an appealing USB Flash drive solution targeted towards the road warriors out there. The unit is rated by Kingston Technology to operate at speeds of up 20MB/sec read and 10MB/sec write.
Just like with the HyperX drive, the DataTraveler 400 features a capless design, however there is no slider present, instead it let’s the USB connector reside inside the metal frame. To extend the connector you can press on the side and swivel the main part from the enclosed metallic frame then swivel it back when you take it off.
The unit measures 2.58” x 0.71” x 0.41” (65.76mm x 17.98mm x 10.7mm) and is built on an eye-catching metallic black frame.
Its distinctive design is not the only characteristic making this unit stand from other USB flash drives; the bundled software truly determines what the DataTraveler 400 is all about. The unit comes preloaded with the MigoSync software giving you the possibility to synchronize your files, email and browser settings between different computers. In addition with the bundled SecureTraveler2 software, you can as well password protect your files and have the option to create and access a password protected area “Privacy Zone”.
The DataTraveler 400 comes in 2GB, 4GB and 8GB flavours and is compatible with Windows 2000, XP, Vista (enhanced for Windows ReadyBoost) and MacOS 10+. Bad news for Linux users, this product has no official Linux support.
After a second test using SiSoftware Sandra we’ve achieved maximal write speeds of 8.26MB/sec and 23.32MB/sec read speed. The test file was the same compressed 500MB zip archive that we used on the HyperX test.
Concerning pricing, I must say that the DataTraveler 400 is priced to please! After an effortless search around the web we found the 2GB version for as low as 26$, the 4GB version for 35$ and the 8GB version for 65$ making this product our best value pick for people looking for a fast and secure solution to safely carry their essential information. The DataTraveler 400 is much more than a simple everyday Flash drive!
Oleg Mitskaniouk
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