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PQI U510 Card Drive 1GB


Date
: 06/25/07 – 01:01:59 AM

Author
:

Category
: Storage

Page 1 : Index

Manufacturer:
PQI

Price:
~$24 DZ-Tech

Established in 1997, Power Quotient International Co., Ltd. is known to be one of the major players in the memory market. Their product lines include flash memory cards, USB flash drives, DRAM modules, and even multimedia players. I've seen a lot of affordable PQI memory cards and even DDR modules but I am not familiar with their USB flash drives. This is our first PQI review here at Overclockers Online and I am looking forward to it.

In this article, we will be looking at PQI's unique
U510
from the Card Drive series of USB flash drives.

Page 2 : Package and Specifications

Arriving in a relatively simple blister pack, the U510's package is very well designed. It is elegant without being flashy and does a good job at informing the consumer about the product.

All the important information is present including the PQI logo, the product name in big lettering, some major features, and we can even see the actual card thanks to a window. Also indicated is the capacity; we have the 1GB model though the U510 is available in capacities up to a whopping 32GB.

The back of the package has the specifications and other technical information. It is actually a cardboard insert that fits around the plastic as can be seen here.

For the features and specifications, I looked to the U510 page on PQI's website.

The features are as follows:

The specifications:

Everything looks good so we will proceed onto checking out the physical incarnation of these specifications.

Page 3 : Package Contents and Setup

Opening the package reveals all the contents.

Also, the backside of the cardboard insert has more information regarding how to use the U510.

The contents include a small getting-started card, a quick start guide, a quick installation guide, a black drawstring carrying pouch, and a 2' USB extension cable.

Finally, we find the U510 itself nestled within the plastic frame.

My first thoughts on seeing the U510 were centered around its unique form factor. Also, its shininess caught my eye.

The brushed aluminum looks very elegant; it is interrupted only by markings for PQI's logo and the capacity, 1GB, imprinted at two corners.

Looking at the other side of the U510, we still have the same beautiful brushed aluminum finish, interrupted at two corners once again. The bottom right corner has some markings to identify it as the U510 as well as some regulatory markings. The top right corner features the slide-out USB connector's backside.

The connector has small ridges on it for grip. Fully extended, it protrudes about 1 inch out. On the flexible cable is imprinted a PQI logo as well as the URL to PQI's website, www.pqi.com.tw.

Looking at the other side we see the contacts of the USB connector; they look gold-plated. The PQI logo can also be found on this side though the reflectivity of the cable makes it hard to photograph.

One last look at the card before we get to testing, highlighting its thickness. Or should I say thinness?

At 3mm, the U510 has the same thickness as two CDs stacked up. Pretty impressive.

Installation is as easy as with any other USB flash drive: just plug it in! Be sure to insert the connector such that the contacts are facing toward the middle of the USB port; it is easy to mistakenly insert it the other way since the connector basically consists of just the contacts. If the retractable connector is too short to connect to a USB port, use the included extension cable. The U510 looks very elegant when plugged in as the aluminum casing matches just about anything, including my Toshiba Satellite R25 Tablet PC running Windows Vista Business.

A small blue LED lights up when plugged in. It blinks when data transfer occurs.

After Windows detected the device, two drives showed up. One contains a little over 953MB of free space and the other contains 10MB of data and setup files for the "USB Notebook Professional" software. I could not get the software to install. Perhaps it is incompatible with Vista?

I kept getting an error message that prevented me from installing "USB Notebook Professional".

Nevertheless, I proceeded to testing.

Page 4 : Testing

Testing will involve both synthetic and "real-world" benchmarks to analyze the performance of the PQI U510.

HD Tach

First up, the HD Tach tests.

The results show an average read speed of 15.4 MB/s and a burst speed of 18.1 MB/s. Not too shabby I would say. The random access time is a mere 7.7 ms and CPU utilization was 8%.

HD Tune

The HD Tune 2.53 tests mirror the HD Tach results more or less.

However, the speeds were slightly lower and CPU utilization was higher.

ATTO Disk Benchmark

Looking at ATTO Disk Benchmark shows maximum read speeds of up to almost 18 MB/s. However, write speeds are very low, barely exceeding 2 MB/s.

Page 5 : Testing (cont’d.)

IOZone

First up are the IOZone reader and writer benchmarks.

There is a lot of information present in the IOZone graphs so take some time to analyze them.

Speeds range from 2 MB/s to 16 MB/s, in accordance with our previous results.

The writer report has write speeds going from around 0.5 MB/s to up to 4.5 MB/s. Though write speeds are tolerable, this is still on the low side.

DiskBench

Next, we have the DiskBench benchmarks. These differ from some synthetic benchmarks in that the results are actual times for copying and reading files.

Note that these results also confirm what we have been seeing all along.

SiSoft Sandra

Finally, we have benchmarks from SiSoft Sandra Lite XI.SP2 (11.35). These include results from both the Removable Storage benchmark and the File System benchmark.

Throughout all the tests, the write speed was a little lacking but the read speed should be OK.

Page 6 : Conclusion

It is no denying that the PQI U510 is a unique product. Its main selling point is the wallet-size form factor as performance isn't exactly its forté.

In fact, I kept the U510 in my wallet during the entire testing period of over two weeks. Though its rigidity made it a little uncomfortable in my pocket, I quickly got used to it. It did not crack or break. However, a little bit of flex couldn't hurt.

All things considered, I would highly recommend the PQI U510 to anyone looking for a good USB flash drive, with capacities up to 32GB, in a thin card-size form factor.

Advantages:

• Sleek, well-designed, great form factor

• Decent read speeds
• Includes USB extension cord and carrying case

Disadvantages:

• Low write speeds

• A bit rigid
• Regular 1GB flash drives can be bought for less but at par pricing for larger drives

Overclockers Online would like to thank PQI for providing a review sample of the U510.