Kingston DataTraveler Mini Slim

Kingston couldn’t have chosen a better name for this USB flash drive because it most certainly is miniature and slim. Straight from the off then, this drive is ideal for users that have to travel with data but aren’t interested in traveling with regular-sized USB flash drives or even larger portable hard drives.

With 4Gbytes of storage on offer (16Gbytes is the highest to date), the DataTraveler can easily carry essential data along with a selection of your most priced photos and tunes without breaking a sweat.

Besides its super small footprint, the Kingston isn’t exactly a titan in terms of features; you don’t get any software and the drive isn’t compatible with Vista’s ReadyBoost feature.

In terms of performance, the Mini proved a quick drive in terms of reading performance but surprisingly slow on the writing front. Copying the 238Mbyte test file from our test PC to the Kingston drive took a long one minute and 55 seconds and performing the same test with the larger 1.2Gbyte test file took a staggering nine minutes and 48 seconds. Apacer’s Handy Sieno AH124 by comparison took just 38 seconds for the first file and three minutes and 23 seconds to complete the second test. As a result, if you need a flash drive with which to share large amounts of data with other users, the Kingston isn’t perhaps the best choice.