14 DAY TRIAL // Over the past few months, Flash storage solutions developers brought out a significant number of flash drives with high storage capacities or very advanced encryption protocols. They all excelled in one or multiple areas, whether they dealt with security, performance and reliability. Still, SanDisk decided it was time to offer something less pretentious, so it unleashed a new series of Cruzer flash devices. Dubbed Cruzer Blade, the newcomers excel in the field of compactness, being only as large as paper clips, but still manage to pack up to 16GB of storage.
In terms of speed, they aren't particularly revolutionary, since they don't support USB 3.0. On the other hand, from their size alone, one can gather that the Cruzer Blade are intended as traveling companions, They have a capless design and a fairy unique shape that makes them stand out amongst their peers. As for actual performance numbers, they come in 2GB, 4GB, 8GB and 16GB versions. 4GB corresponds to, as the official press release points out, 1,000 songs, 1,200 high-resolution photos, or 8 hours of 768kb/s video. SanDisk also assures that the units are sturdy enough to withstand the trials of travels.
"At half the size of some other USB drives, our compact Cruzer Blade provides consumers with highly portable storage at a great value," said Kent Perry, director, retail product marketing, SanDisk. "The drive lets users transfer their digital data quickly between computers, and delivers a storage boost to devices such as netbooks that often need additional memory but are difficult to upgrade easily."
The SanDisk Cruzer Blade USB flash drives are obviously priced according to their storage space. The 2GB unit sells for $14.99 and should be enough for most casual documents or small files. Also, the 4GB unit is priced at $21.99. As for the larger-capacity iterations, the 8GB and 16GB sell for $38.99 and $77.99, respectively.