14 DAY TRIAL // In a world where most flash drives are plastic sticks, Corsair decided to tread the road less traveled and release a unit that is dressed in metal instead. Not that such drives are overly rare, but they still aren't as common as plastic ones.
They also tend to be a bit superior to the rest, for the simple fact that metal adds cost and style, both of which would be wasted on a sluggish storage unit. Safe for capacity.
Speaking of which, the new drive, or series of drives since there are three of them, is called Corsair Flash Voyager Vega. The flash drives should all be roughly the size of a quarter dollar coin.
The Corsair Flash Voyager Vega
As far as flash drives go, it is above average by a fair bit, and we're not just saying that because of the metallic case whose existence we've already established.
Although that does bring up the higher than normal degree of ruggedness (ability to survive accidents and deliberate bashing), but we digress.
There are three storage devices in total, with capacities of 15 GB, 32 GB and 64 GB. No wimps of 8 GB or less here, no sir.
Also, the connection technology is Universal Serial Bus version 3.0, or USB 3.0 for short. Ten times the maximum (potential) speed of USB 2.0. It's called SuperSpeed for a reason.
Unfortunately, with the way NAND chips work, you can't expect all three units to operate at the same speeds. That's how it works on this stage. The higher the capacity, the better the read/write speeds.
Speeds you will have to guess for yourself, since Corsair did not see fit to mention them, not in the press release and not on the official product pages on its website. At least we know that all three newcomers ship with a five-year warranty.
The outer design of the flash drives
The Corsair Flash Voyager Vega doesn't have a distinct USB connector. Instead, one end is the USB 3.0 port. The other end has a full hook, hole or whatever you want to call it. You can use it to hang the drive off a keychain, lanyard or the dropper included with the product. It's even slightly bent upwards, for good fit.
Corsair describes the things as an “ideal plug-and-leave storage solution for notebooks, car audio systems, game consoles, and other devices.” We'll let you decide if it's true. The drives sell for $19.99 / €19.99 to $44.99 / €44.99 and are compatible with Windows, Mac OS and Linux operating systems, as well as Android. That includes older versions (and, by extension, USB 2.0 ports).
