14 DAY TRIAL // The smaller an item is, the harder it is to make a realistic drawing on it, but this hasn't been a problem in decades for automated graphical etching techniques, which is why the footballs on the new Team Group flash drives are so lifelike.
Well, insofar as an inanimate object can even seem lifelike. Though we suppose depicting motion itself can earn that qualifier, more or less.
Anyway, Team Group has introduced a series of flash drives that celebrate the newest football championship.
The line is called T141 Football Flash Drives and depicts the red and yellow cards that saw so many players booted from the field.
The inscribed imprints of the football in the goals is just a visual bonus, to bring you closer to your favorite sport as it were.
In the end, it's kind of a shame that, as actual storage devices, the newcomers leave a lot to be desired. And they don't have OTG support to show for it either.
You see, OTG technology means that the drives can recognize certain Android smartphones as they would host PCs.
The drawback is that those devices need to settle for USB 2.0 technology because USB 3.0 doesn't come in a micro-USB format.
For all other flash drives, it's a black mark if they are limited to USB 2.0, 480 Mbps instead of the 5 Gbps of SuperSpeed USB 3.0. And yet the ones that Team Group has just introduced do this very thing: stick only to USB 2.0 technology.
Coupled with the capacity of 8 GB and 16 GB, it will take ages to actually fill the things up with whatever music library or movie collection you are partial towards.
In a way, the issue is somewhat mitigated by Team Group's statement that the drives are supposed to be collector's items.
“The exclusive World Cup classic design also serves as a collectible for the enthusiastic World Cup fans. It is absolutely a valuable to worth keeping it on top of your treasure list,” were the company's own words in its press release.
So if you're a football fan (soccer for Americans), there's nothing to hold you back from buying one of these things. As you can see, they are shaped like trays, about the size of a credit card. Only the small section on the left hand corner actually holds any NAND chips. All in all, a surprisingly popular design choice in these times.