SanDisk cruzer u3 titanium review
After having taken a break of the OC3D reviews I have now started to review the smaller things for which reviews are hard to find. One of these things is a good USB stick. Yes, they all work. Yes, nowadays they are all small. But which one really stands out of the crowd?
For me the answer to this question is the Sandisk cruzer U3 titanium. The name being a mouthful, the official specs aren't bad either:
- Read: 15 MB/s
- Write: 9 MB/s
- Capacities: 1GB, 2GB (reviewed) (both not available anymore), 4GB, 8GB, 16GB.
- Dimensions: 7.14mm x 19.05mm x 57.94mm (D x W x L)
- Weight: 22g +/- 0.5g measured
- U3 installed
- Retractable USB connector
- LiquidMetal titanium body with a crush force of up to 2000lbs
One of these items needs to be explained: the U3 application. U3 is a small platform on which you can install software especially designed or adapted to the U3 platform. When you insert your U3 USB stick into any vanilla XP the U3 menu will show. This menu is like the Windows Start Menu where you can select the apps to run. The only bad side about this U3: apps are usually slow responding because they are booting from a 15MB/s drive and the U3 menu does not seem to boot on my Vista Ultimate installation.
So, let's take a look at the stick itself:
The USB connector is slid out to avoid lost caps:
Packaging and Bundle
The stick came with a neck strap and belt clip, which I both lost. I have had this stick for three years now and the only thing I can find is the stick itself.
Performance
For a read test I unleashed HDTune on the stick:
Here we can see the Cruzer Titanium sticks exactly to its specifications, with a neat average read of 15.2MB/s and the typical flash memory <1 ms random access time.
For writing I had to be a little more creative, because HDTune doesn't test it. Having only 200MB of free space on the disk I decided to take a folder with photos (35 items, 151MB total) and copy it to the disk. This transfer took 31 seconds, resulting in a write speed of ~4.9MB/s, which sadly is only half the promised speed.
Daily use
Let me summarize this at once: I love this USB stick. I've had it in my wallet - on which I always sit - for over a year, stood on it a few times, bumped into it while it was in a front USB slot and it still works like a charm. The titanium casing feels very rigid and has proven to be so. I have not tried to test the 2000lbs max. force specified, but someone on this site did. With a car. If you have five minutes please watch the video, it's good stuff
The slideout connector is easy to use as I tend to lose caps all the time. And it gives a nice glow :')
Conclusion
The sandisk cruzer U3 titanium is a well protected data stick. Do not expect outstanding performance from this already 3 year old drive, but it's sure to protect your data under all circumstances.
The good:
- Titanium casing
The mediocre:
- Performance
The bad:
- You can still lose it
Performance: 7
The drive is faster than the usual freebies, but newer drives are usually faster
Presentation: -
No bundle left...
Value: 10
Although the 16GB version can currently be found for €38 excl. while its plastic counterpart is around €20, this drive will last you about ten times as long even if you are twice as clumsy as I am with such things. Flash memory will last about 10 years and the casing ... a few ages so no worries about breaking it.
After having taken a break of the OC3D reviews I have now started to review the smaller things for which reviews are hard to find. One of these things is a good USB stick. Yes, they all work. Yes, nowadays they are all small. But which one really stands out of the crowd?
For me the answer to this question is the Sandisk cruzer U3 titanium. The name being a mouthful, the official specs aren't bad either:
- Read: 15 MB/s
- Write: 9 MB/s
- Capacities: 1GB, 2GB (reviewed) (both not available anymore), 4GB, 8GB, 16GB.
- Dimensions: 7.14mm x 19.05mm x 57.94mm (D x W x L)
- Weight: 22g +/- 0.5g measured
- U3 installed
- Retractable USB connector
- LiquidMetal titanium body with a crush force of up to 2000lbs
One of these items needs to be explained: the U3 application. U3 is a small platform on which you can install software especially designed or adapted to the U3 platform. When you insert your U3 USB stick into any vanilla XP the U3 menu will show. This menu is like the Windows Start Menu where you can select the apps to run. The only bad side about this U3: apps are usually slow responding because they are booting from a 15MB/s drive and the U3 menu does not seem to boot on my Vista Ultimate installation.
So, let's take a look at the stick itself:
The USB connector is slid out to avoid lost caps:
Packaging and Bundle
The stick came with a neck strap and belt clip, which I both lost. I have had this stick for three years now and the only thing I can find is the stick itself.
Performance
For a read test I unleashed HDTune on the stick:
Here we can see the Cruzer Titanium sticks exactly to its specifications, with a neat average read of 15.2MB/s and the typical flash memory <1 ms random access time.
For writing I had to be a little more creative, because HDTune doesn't test it. Having only 200MB of free space on the disk I decided to take a folder with photos (35 items, 151MB total) and copy it to the disk. This transfer took 31 seconds, resulting in a write speed of ~4.9MB/s, which sadly is only half the promised speed.
Daily use
Let me summarize this at once: I love this USB stick. I've had it in my wallet - on which I always sit - for over a year, stood on it a few times, bumped into it while it was in a front USB slot and it still works like a charm. The titanium casing feels very rigid and has proven to be so. I have not tried to test the 2000lbs max. force specified, but someone on this site did. With a car. If you have five minutes please watch the video, it's good stuff
The slideout connector is easy to use as I tend to lose caps all the time. And it gives a nice glow :')
Conclusion
The sandisk cruzer U3 titanium is a well protected data stick. Do not expect outstanding performance from this already 3 year old drive, but it's sure to protect your data under all circumstances.
The good:
- Titanium casing
The mediocre:
- Performance
The bad:
- You can still lose it
Performance: 7
The drive is faster than the usual freebies, but newer drives are usually faster
Presentation: -
No bundle left...
Value: 10
Although the 16GB version can currently be found for €38 excl. while its plastic counterpart is around €20, this drive will last you about ten times as long even if you are twice as clumsy as I am with such things. Flash memory will last about 10 years and the casing ... a few ages so no worries about breaking it.
Now hope it's a board supporting that RAM 
