Sony's newer, slimmer and faster Micro Vault might command a price premium, but users who demand speed will find it a compelling buy. Read our Australian review.Sony's recently announced Elite Micro Vault is notable for two reasons. Firstly, Sony's made it a tad thinner than its previous models, while at the same time accelerating the Micro Vault's transfer speeds. Both factors combined make for a solid choice for anyone looking for a portable storage solution with a dash of style.
When it comes to portable USB storage, there's very little physical variance between most models; you're basically talking a chunk of chippage jammed into a tiny, generally rectangular package. The Elite Micro Vault certainly looks the part of a Sony product; the 512MB stick we tested has a dark grey exterior coating with a bright orange internal casing surrounding the USB plug; when the cover is on all you'll see is a circular area displaying the storage capacity. Admittedly, it'd be a huge waste of power, but we were still faintly disappointed that it didn't give off a comforting orange glow when plugged into our test PC.
The only thing we didn't like about the Elite Micro Vault's packaging was, in fact, the packaging that the whole kit comes in. It's bound up in solid plastic packaging of the type that games controllers are often sealed into, and opening it up will require a solid sharp object and a willingness to destroy; just be careful not to stab the supplied driver and utilities CD on the way.
The Elite Micro Vault is compatible with Windows PCs running Windows 98 or higher, although as usual you'll need to install a driver on Windows 98/98SE machines before it'll be recognised. Any Mac running OS 9.0 or greater should, like their Windows counterparts, be able to plug in the Elite and be up and running practically immediately. The Elite Micro Vault boasts some impressive sounding transfer speeds -- up to 12MB/sec reading and 7MB/sec writing -- but to get anywhere near those rates, you'll need a machine with USB2.0 Hi-Speed ports.
On the software side, the supplied CD comes with drivers (for Windows 98/SE users) and a group of utilities designed to simplify certain download and net tasks. Auto Login remembers Web site login and form information and will auto-complete sites it remembers, while AutoZip creates a special compression folder that will shrink files down into common ZIP files when they're dropped in there -- although how much shrinkage you get will depend on how compressible your original file was. On the security side, Password Lock acts almost exactly as its name suggests, locking away content on the Micro Vault, while PC Lock will remove user access to the keyboard and mouse when the Micro Vault is removed. That's not exactly iron-clad security -- a determined data thief could always remove your power source, for example -- but it's probably good enough to stop casual snoopers.
Size and design characteristics aside, Sony's big hook for the Elite Micro Vault is that it boasts better transfer speeds than its predecessors -- 12MB/sec for reading and 7MB/sec writing. Those are best case scenario figures, of course, but it's nice to have a speedy drive for small file transfers, which on the 512MB unit we tested were virtually instantaneous. Giving the unit a larger challenge did slow matters down a tad, however.
Transferring a 444MB directory containing 122 files took 1:44, which translates out to around 4.2MB/sec. The same directory took exactly 60 seconds to transfer back -- that's a reading rate of 7.4MB/sec, well below the peak listed figures. At that kind of delay, however, it's hardly likely to be a massive problem for anyone transferring files, and on the smaller Elite Micro Vaults (128M and upwards) we suspect it'd be a bit of a non-issue.
Consumers are absolutely spoilt for choice when it comes to portable USB storage devices, and they're essentially just getting better. Being a Sony-branded product, there is a slight premium for the branding alone, but at AU$349.95 for the 512MB unit, it's a solid option, especially if you constantly need to shuffle around large files in small amounts of time.
Sony Elite Micro Vault
Company: Sony Australia
Price: AU$349.95
Distributor: Selected resellers
Phone: 1300 137 669
4%
4%
