14 DAY TRIAL // Active Media Products has taken the time to introduce a new series of external solid state drives compatible with the USB 3.0 standard. Measuring 135 x 84 x 15 mm, the 2.5-inch form factor Aviator-2 solid state drives offer a 400% performance gain when compared to USB 2.0 external hard drives. The Aviator-2 drives leverage the high speed capabilities of the SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface, whose speeds can be of up to 4.8Gbps, namely it is ten times faster than USB 2.0.
The Aviator-2 SSD comes in two versions, one with 64GB of storage and another with a capacity of 128GB. The former can operate at speeds of 230MB/s when reading and 160 MB/s when writing, whereas the latter reaches read/write speeds of 230/120 MB/s. Of course, the drives are backward compatible with USB 2.0 and USB 1.1 ports, although, in such scenarios, transfer speeds will, naturally, be limited by the interface's bandwidth.
The two drives feature a rugged, steel case, which can also be sold as a separate SSD enclosure that can be paired with 64GB or 128GB Predator X7 SSDs. It can be sold as a standalone product and, in addition to SSDs, the Aviator-2 enclosure can house a 2.5-inch SATA HDD.
"These products effectively render external USB 2.0 hard drives obsolete since for a few dollars more you can plug a 2.5-inch hard drive into the Aviator-2 case and get up to 200% faster performance," said Jerry Thomson, vice president of sales at Active Media Products. "Or the Aviator-2 bundled with our Predator SSD inside will blow away any hard drive with speeds above 150MB/sec."
Already available, the Aviator-2 64GB and 128GB drives are priced at $260 and $450, respectively. In addition, the Aviator-2 enclosure has a tag of $35 and comes bundled with a USB 2.0 power cable (for HDDs with high power demands).