14 DAY TRIAL // Coming to make a contribution on the already extensive flash drive market, Freecom has unveiled a new series of Universal Serial Bus sticks in Europe, one dubbed DataBar.
There are many USB flash drives out there, each one focused on one aspect or another of the whole concept, or more of them.
Freecom chose to put emphasis on compactness and ease of use, as well as user peace of mind, when it made the DataBar.
This product series doesn't really have any monumental features like encryption or super-high storage capacities.
It also doesn't have the SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface, which is much faster than USB 2.0, albeit more expensive to implement.
Instead, the new products have one of many possible storage capacities inside an aluminum frame with a sliding mechanism.
"The whole point of USB sticks is that they are small enough to carry around wherever users go, but with traditional designs it’s easy to misplace the cap when moving a stick around from one place to the other," said Cas de Heus, marketing and communications manager EUMEA at Freecom.
"With the DataBar, we have overcome this problem thanks to the capless design – and what’s more, this ‘all in one’ USB stick is as stylish as it is practical."
The DataBar flash drives measure 5.5 x 2.0 x 0.95 centimeters, which is about the same as 2 x 0.78 x 0.37 inches. Their blueprint was made in collaboration with industrial designers Niels in Vorm and EigenID.
As for actual storage capacities, there should be 2 GB, 4 GB, 8 GB, 16 GB, 32 GB and even 64 GB options, the cheapest going for 4.25 Euro.
US prices, if the flash drives even get there, were not given, and while the sum of 4.25 Euro does translate into $3.19, it is well known that prices don't often reflect exchange rates.