INTRODUCTION

   Well it's finally official, Chris Roberts and his team managed to gather over $6.000.000 for his next state of the art space-simulator called Squadron 42/Star Citizen via crowd-funding so all that's left is to see which of our favorite WC (Wing Commander) actor or actors will come back to give their voice to the game (Mark Hamill, Malcolm MacDowell or Tom Wilson? Hopefully all three) and to wait patiently for a full year until the launch of the first Alpha test version (easier said than done). In any case until that day comes we will follow our regular routine (because let's face it, when that day comes we may see several update blackouts around here) and so today we are taking an in-depth look at the latest (and quite small) Firma F80 32GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive by Silicon Power.

   Silicon Power Computer & Communications Inc., founded in 2003 by a group of enthusiastic specialists in International Business, Global Marketing, and Technical Engineering of flash data storage industry. Well dedicated in brand image and product quality, Silicon Power 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 to reach the worldwide market. Silicon Power's overall performance has gradually drawn great attention worldwide. In 2006, we received Taiwan Rising Star Award for our foreign business achievement. In 2008, we won 17th National Outstanding Small & Medium Enterprise Award for our outstanding progress. Moreover, with superior quality and innovative design, our products stood out in several competitions and awarded Taiwan Excellence and COMPUTEX Design & Innovation Award in 2009, 2010 and 2011. Winning trust of global consumers, Silicon Power holds a record of successive double-digit revenue growth for last seven years. According to the Common Wealth Magazine's 2010 Survey of Taiwan Top 1000 Manufacturers, our 2009 revenue growth rate was ranked No.11 among Taiwan's top 1000 manufacturers, and even ranked No.1 in semiconductor industry. Positioned as Passionate, Creative and Hungry for Success, Silicon Power introduces products for users who are seeking individualized, unique and personal digital storage devices. With the mission of creating unprecedented experience for users, Silicon Power will endeavor to deliver a full range of high quality products that have innovative designs, distinctly unique features and comprehensive after sales services to create and fulfill your personal memory.

   We all know that the market is filled with countless USB and eSATA flash drives from low to ultra-high end models, unfortunately however there aren't many of those out there allowing you to easily carry them with your keychain. Sure most come with an small lanyard that makes it easy for you to attach them with your keys but due to both their size and weight that's not usually something many do (especially with their car keys). Now we have seen some very small USB flash drives in the past from Super Talent, Verbatim and others but almost every single one is not what I’d call durable and so I’d strongly advice against having any of those with your keys at all times. Kingston and LaCie were the first (to my knowledge) two manufacturers to introduce USB flash drives made by durable metal and with sizes no larger than those of a small key. Naturally it was only a matter of time before others jumped onto the wagon and Silicon Power just did with the Firma F80 32GB USB flash drive. However such drives (to date) have a single drawback and that's their USB 2.0 connectivity and although i was hoping that the F80 was going to be the first USB 3.0 compatible one that isn't the case.

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

THE FIRMA F80 32GB

As with most flash drives out there the Firma F80 gets shipped inside a clamshell package.

The main features of the unit are printed at the rear in 10 languages right above the OS compatibility list.

Since the F80 was designed to fit your keychain there's no lanyard in the bundle.

As usual to see just how large the drive in question is we placed it right next to some of the USB flash drives we've tested in the past and next to its rival, the smaller DTSE9 by Kington.

The metal housing of the F80 (zinc alloy) comes in silver and the entire drive weighs a total of 5.9g. At the front we see the Silicon Power logo and the drive capacity while at the rear we see a total of 4 certification logos.

There's a hole on the interior of the ring which at first i thought was an activity LED but it seems it's just a hole to allow heat to exit.

SP WIDGET

Silicon Power also provides 3 programs under their support page for their USB products, the SP Widget, a trial version of Norton Internet Security and USB recovery software.

With the SP Widget you can backup pretty much everything from your computer onto the USB drive and afterwards you can even use the Data encryption selection to encrypt those files.

TEST BED

TESTING METHODOLOGY

   Since flash drives are basically plain storage media devices just like solid state drives and hard disk drives we are using almost the same testing methodology to successfully record the achieved performance numbers. The benchmark suites used are HD Tach RW (Read Speeds / Long Bench 32mb Zone Testing), HD Tune Pro (Read speeds), Sisoftware Sandra Pro (Read / Write speeds), AIDA 64 Engineer Edition (Average Linear Read / Random Read speeds), Crystal Disk Mark x64 (100MB Read / Write speeds) and finally ATTO (Max Read / Max Write speeds). Every test is repeated a total of 6 times after which the average performance numbers are recorded into our charts.

   All tests are performed with are main test rig running Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate x64 Service Pack 1 complete with every system update up until November 10th 2012. As always for comparison purposes in the charts you will also find many other flash drives which have been tested using the same exact test bench as the one in this review (we really can't keep every flash drive we get forever and also even if we could testing them all again and again would simply not be possible).

TEST RESULTS - AIDA64 / ATTO

TEST RESULTS - HD TACH RW / HD TUNE PRO

TEST RESULTS - SISOFTWARE SANDRA PRO / CRYSTAL DISK MARK X64

CONCLUSION

   We are just days away from entering 2013 so we were somewhat surprised to see the performance levels of the Firma F80 32GB USB flash drive, in a bad way i must say. So because i personally wanted to make sure that this is the kind of performance one can expect from such tiny USB flash drives i decided to also get a Kingston DTSE9 16GB USB flash drive (mainly because of their similarities) to see just how well it would do compared to the F80 and to my surprise it did slightly worse in most tests. Certainly the differences in performance between both drives are small but that way we verified that there wasn't something wrong with the drive at hand. Certainly the fact that the F80 outperformed the DTSE9 in the majority of the benchmarks we used (4 more) is a bonus which matters quite a bit when comparing similar products. Quality-wise both the F80 and the DTES9 feature metal casings but the one of the F80 does feel a bit better (smoother) and according to Silicon Power they used zinc alloy for the casing (offers corrosion protection, temperature and wear resistance) just like Kingston does with their DTSE9.

   With a current retail price tag set at around USD25 inside the USA (Amazon) and at 22Euros inside the EU the Firma F80 32GB USB flash drive by Silicon Power is a real catch especially if you don't own a USB 3.0 compatible system. However even for people who do the size, quality, design and weight of the F80 should be more than enough for them to make it part of their keychain (i did). Granted it may be light years apart from the fastest USB 3.0 drives available today but it's faster (and better looking according to what most people i showed them to said) than its direct rival the DTSE9 by Kingston and because of that it gets our Golden Award.

PROS

- Build Quality (Zinc Alloy Casing)
- Design
- Size/Weight
- Performance (Compared To The DTSE9)
- Price (For Some)

CONS

- Current Availability