OCZ Mini Kart 1GB
With its Rally Drive, OCZ brought something fresh and new to an otherwise static sector. The Rally featured a dual channel memory controller offering almost twice the performance of a conventional drive and with its sleek aluminium frame certainly looked the part as well. Today we have the OCZ Mini Kart for review, an altogether different spin on this popular form of portable storage. Whilst the Rally was certainly compact, the Mini Kart is positively tiny. With dimensions of 43mm x 19mm x 2.5mm it is small enough to fit sideways inside an SD protective case and that is exactly how OCZ ensures its safe transit.
In addition to the drive itself, OCZ provides a small lanyard that allows the Mini Kart to be attached to a key ring. This is probably the best option, as its small size and diminutive weight make it extremely easy to loose. One area where OCZ has really cut down on size is by removing the metal shield around the USB connector. Whilst the exposed gold contacts show you which orientation it should be plugged into the slot, you will not cause any damage should you mistakenly insert it upside-down. Somehow OCZ has also managed to cram in a blue LED status light into the back of the device, so you will instantly know when you have plugged it in the correct way round. Not bad for a pen drive slimmer than a 50p coin.
In terms of performance, the Mini Kart is speedy, though not quite as rapid as the Rally Drive; with a sustained read speed of approximately 20Mb/s and a write speed of around 6MB/s for large files. Small file performance was approximately 3x slower than this, but that is perfectly normal for this kind of technology. To better give you an idea of what this performance equates to in real-life conditions, moving a 213MB video file from the hard disk to the Mini Cart took 31 seconds. Whilst these performance numbers are not quite as quick as the Rally, they are not far off at all and are certainly quicker than the vast majority of USB2.0 Pen Drives. For users looking for an exceptionally small pen drive to sit on your keyring, the Mini Kart is the perfect choice.
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Pros:
- Very fast
- Well priced
- REALLY tiny
- Lanyard included
- Lifetime warranty
Cons:
- Not quite as fast as the OCZ Rally Drive
- Could be a bit easy to lose!
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