Sony Micro Vault USM-EX Turbo (USM1GEX)

Micro Vault series drives feature an original design that sets them apart from other products. Here, the visible part of the case and the cap are made of ivory-white plastic. They meet each other exactly in the middle so that the circle gives you a view of a part of the drive that is made of translucent brown plastic. On one side of the drive you can see its capacity marked, on the other, the interface. There is a green LED indicator under the circle. The cap with the manufacturer’s name snaps in place very tight, so you are unlikely to lose it. A small neck cord can be attached to the cap.

As far as I could gather from the manufacturer’s website, the Micro Vault USM-EX Turbo series includes 1GB and 512MB models with declared read and write speeds of 28MB/s and 18MB/s, respectively. There is a 2GB model in the series but it has different speed specs. The drive has a USB 2.0 interface. Its dimensions are 78 x 20 x 11mm; its weight is 13g.

You get a neck cord and a CD with PowerChartManager as accessories to this drive. The manufacturer’s website mentions four more programs you can use with this flash drive, but you have to download them from the Internet. These are AutoZip (to compress data on the drive), PC Lock (can temporarily block the keyboard and mouse), Password Lock (protects confidential data with a password) and AutoLogin (enables you to automatically log in to your favorite websites). It’s not quite clear why they didn’t put these programs on the included CD which comes with quite a lot of free space left. Perhaps Sony tries to promote the attendance of its website.

The PowerChartManager is intended to manage documents, files and folders stored on the flash drive. Selected files can be prepared for a PowerPoint presentation. Documents can be imported from other external drives; files can be exported, too.

The average retail price of the device is $25.