INTRODUCTION

   Have you ever gone to visit a friend or attend a meeting and just before you left you decided that you needed to copy some data only to find out that the capacity of the storage device you carry with you was just insufficient for the task? Well that used to happen to me quite a bit until i finally decided that it was better to have a very large USB flash drive mounted on my keychain and perhaps never need to use all of its available space than to need more space and not have it (for me the same logic applies to power supply units as well). Times change however and so now even a 32GB USB flash drive which was considered as enormous not too long ago might not be enough to hold everything you may want to store. Fortunately with all the price drops occurring around us all the time the price/capacity ratio crown now belongs to 64GB models and today we will be taking a thorough look at one such model the Marvel M70 64GB USB 3.0 USB Flash Drive by Silicon Power.

   Silicon Power Computer & Communications Inc., founded in 2003 by a group of enthusiastic specialists of flash data storage industry. Well dedicated in brand image and product quality, SP has been recognized and well accepted by millions of end-users in more than 100 countries, becomes the world’s leading manufacturer of flash memory cards, USB flash drives, card readers, DRAM modules, solid state disks, and portable hard drives in less than a decade. Headquartered in Taipei, we continuously established various branches throughout the world including Netherlands, Japan, Russia, Mainland China and other emerging market. With superior quality and innovative design, our products stood out in many competitions and awarded with numerous well-known design awards, such as Taiwan Excellence, COMPUTEX Design & Innovation Award, red dot design award, iF Design Award and IDEA . Winning trust of global consumers SP holds a record of successive double-digit revenue growth for last ten years. For SP, the product we introduced is not only a digital storage device but also a real promise to create and preserve your most valuable memory in every moment.

   Compared to most USB flash drives currently available by Silicon Power the Marvel M70 line is quite unique since the housing of its three available models (32/64/128GB) is made out of Zinc Alloy and features a retractable connector design. Normally i prefer USB flash drives that feature rugged rubber or metal housings but Zinc Alloy is right after those in my list (Zinc Alloy USB flash drives are also smaller and more elegant usually). Silicon Power also offers lifetime warranty on the Marvel M70 line and has also given the housing an ergonomic design which according to them makes it easier to "handle" the drive but to me it just looks like one of the very old formula cars. So in the quality and design areas the Marvel M70 is doing very well but what about performance? According to Silicon Power the Marvel M70 can reach read speeds of up to 230MB/s and write speeds of up to 80MB/s so the time has come for us to find out if these numbers are accurate.