14 DAY TRIAL // Even despite the slow adoption of the SuperSpeed, USB 3.0 standard, storage-solution developers are not holding back from unleashing a new product capable of taking advantage of the high bandwidth of 5Gbps. This is exactly why so many USB flash drives and external HDDs or SSDs have been announced and why even motherboard makers went that extra mile and bought a USB 3.0 controller chip to add ports to their high-end platforms.
On that note, Power Quotient International released the COOL USB 3.0 Flash drive back in December, which came in capacities of up to 64GB and had a transfer speed of up to 97MB/s. Seeing how the USB 3.0 standard propagates, the company has now unveiled its second USB 3.0 Flash drive, known as the U368, which comes with both the benefit of a higher maximum storage space, as well as overall faster data-transfer rates.
The PQI U368 is available in storage capacities of 8GB, 16GB, 32GB, 64GB and 128GB. On USB 2.0, such a large capacity takes a very long time to fill and even backup tasks take longer than many consumers are willing to wait. The USB 3.0 connection, however, writes data up to ten times as fast. In this case, the maximum achievable data rate is of 105MB/s. This performance is housed inside a casing measuring 90.1 x 22 x 11.1 mm and weighing 25 grams.
The drive has a royal-blue metallic frame with black streaks and, of course, is backward compatible with USB 2.0 ports, although, obviously, performance will be restricted to the maximum of 480Mbps in this case. Finally, the product will be shipped in a bundle with the TurboFlash USB software, which will boost read/write speeds, ensuring that consumers always get the best out of their purchase. Unfortunately, the prices of the individual versions of the device are not mentioned.