INTRODUCTION

   In the past several jewelry makers have tried (quite unsuccessfully if you ask me) to enter the PC Peripherals market by releasing various products which can also attract the female gender. Most of them however have focused in the design and manufacture of very expensive USB flash drives and just by taking a quick look on Google you can find quite a few that cost well up to $35k. Of course all of those attempts failed for two reasons (well aside the price obviously) storage capacity and design. I mean who in their right mind would purchase a USB flash drive that is shaped like an egg or a mushroom and has sparkling diamonds and rubies all over it (perhaps girls would if they could afford it)? Now I’ve always looked for something special since carrying a USB flash drive around means that people will get to see it but to date aside the usual tiny models made out of Zinc alloy i haven't really found anything to peak my interest. Brinell may actually change that since with us today we have their award winning Single-Action Stick 128GB USB 3.0 flash drive.

   Brinell GmbH gives electronic storage media an exclusive and unmistakable look – the extra special brinell touch. Brinell products stand out with their award-winning avant-garde design, state-of-the-art technology and use of exquisite materials such as stainless steel, Makassar ebony wood, nappa leather and carbon. To this end, brinell’s design and manufacture are housed under one roof, ensuring all materials are well matched and processes are fine-tuned. Thus brinell can offer its demanding customers sophisticated alternatives to the common storage media of the mass market.

   Brinell is amongst a small number of companies that focus both in creating a very unique body for their storage devices without compromising capacity and speed while at the same time price is nowhere near to other similar premium solutions. They've actually been in the market for quite some time now but it wasn't up until a couple of weeks ago that i stumbled across one of their USB flash drives so i just had to take a look for myself. The single-action stick which we have here features an enclosure made out of brushed stainless steel (this applies for all models) and a thin layer of carbon material but Brinell actually offers more than just that version so you can also choose between brushed stainless steel, brushed stainless steel and nappa leather and brushed stainless steel and makassar ebony wood. Limited editions are also available (just not at all capacities) so you can also find a titanium/carbon 64GB model and even three different ones (32GB) featuring a brushed aluminum enclosure that has a nice coating of very small SWAROVSKI® ELEMENTS (different colors). Quality is not however the only strong point of the single-action stick line since according to Brinell performance is also very good and can reach speeds of up to 220MB/s read and 140MB/s write.

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

PACKAGING AND CONTENTS

The single-action stick USB 3.0 flash drive gets shipped inside a small box with the company logo at the top.

At first the box seems very simple but once you open it and see the cleaning cloth along with the drive then you know you can expect more.

So aside the single-action stick drive and the plain cleaning cloth you are also getting a manual, protective leather pouch and a premium cleaning cloth.

THE SINGLE-ACTION STICK 128GB

The 24g heavy brushless stainless steel body of the Brinell single-action stick measures 56mm in length, 22mm in width and 8mm in height (the carbon material looks great although I’d really like it if the entire drive was made by it).

To get a better understanding of just how large (or small) the Brinell drive is we placed it right next to several others.

Brinell has placed their logo on the left side of the body.

The single-action mechanism button used to eject the USB plug is placed right next to the logo.

To retract it you need to keep the button pressed while pushing the USB plug back inside the body.

Brinell lists the drive as a 120GB one but as you can see on the USB plug it clearly says 128GB.

In the drive you will find two applications, one used to encrypt your data and one that helps you backup data from your system and onto the drive (as seen above).

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-1000MB 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 our main rig running Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate x64 Service Pack 1 complete with every update until August 13th 2014. As always for comparison purposes in the charts you will also find many other flash drivers 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

   Unlike many other "premium" USB flash drives in the market currently that combine stunning looks with superior quality components but lack performance the single-action stick by Brinell offers all three and that's not something we can discard. For good or bad however this particular model by Brinell is not brand new and because of that it can't compete with some of the latest and fastest USB 3.0 drives we have in our charts, it does however come really close and to be frank with all of you i doubt anyone will ever complain about its read/write performance. The single-action mechanism is a very nice touch but it would be far better if you could retract the USB plug just by pressing the button again. Sure that's just me being picky but i hope we get to see that in the near future. The leather protection pouch and the two cleaning cloths are also nice additions to the package and certainly not something we see in the market.

   Just like several other EU based manufacturers Brinell is not widely available and so we were unable to locate the 128GB/120GB version of the single-action stick in the USA. However you can always grab it for 167.11Euros from within the EU (Amazon.de) a price tag which may not be on par with that of regular USB 3.0 drives but trust me when i say that it's not much for this particular drive. Of course if you don't really care about quality, appearance and performance then the Brinell solution is obviously not for you. Overall however we all loved the way it looks, feels and performs and although i believe Brinell can do even better (for example a limited lifetime warranty would "sweeten" the deal for some buyers) still their solution is amongst the top 3 USB flash drives I’ve used and tested to date and for that it gets our Platinum Award.

PROS

- Build Quality
- Design
- 8 Available Models
- Very Good Read/Write Performance
- Storage Capacity (128GB)
- Bundled Software (Encryption/Backup)
- Bundle (Leather Pouch/Two Cleaning Cloths)

CONS

- Price (For Some)
- Current Availability