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The Kingston Drive is shipped in a tough plastic clamshell type container, yes the kind of container you need to cut open with a pair of scissors.
The back of the container shows detailed information on the unit as well as a tri head ‘Y' style USB cable.
The USB drive is a lovely looking design – a bevelled white and silver colour scheme which feels substantial and durable in your hand. It is constructed from a mixture of plastic and aluminum. On the front is a DT Ultimate 3.0 logo plate and on the back is the kingston logo, cut into the casing.
The top part of the drive slides off to reveal the USB connector, which being 3.0 standard is coloured blue to match the motherboard coloured ports. There is a little lanyard cable which connects to the rear of the unit.
While the drive can be connected directly to any USB 3.0 port, the Y shaped cable (according to Kingston) has to be used if you need backwards compatibility with USB 2.0. One of these headers is for the data transfer and the other is to acquire extra power. On our 17inch Generation 5.2 Macintosh MacBook pro however the drive did connect directly to a USB 2.0 port without use of the Y adapter. Clearly this cable is included as a fall back to ensure the drive receives enough power via a dual port system.
The drive is what we would class as a ‘medium' sized unit, much smaller than the Corsair Survivor for example, but bigger than the plethora of tiny units available in PC World for a few quid.
When the drive is plugged in it pulses blue during operation (this is using the top mounted USB 3.0 port of the Bitfenix Colossus hooked into the ASRock P55 Extreme 4 Motherboard . Check out the video below.
I am sold, but not just yet, still 6 months life left in my current drive and motherboard. next time, absolutely. Hopefully they bring out USB 3 capable laptops to mainstream shortly also. its a shocking situation. Great drive from kingston.
A lot of cash to part with, but in 6 months these will be half the price. looks like a great first effort from Kingston
USB 3.0, it hasnt been promoted that highly, kudos to kingston for getting the ball rolling.
Very nice looking drive, Never see kingston locally here though, only online.
I am REALLY glad to see this review up. not because im about to go out and blow 150 quid on a flash drive, but because it is about bloody time that someone got USB 3.0 seen, and kingston deserve a pat on the back for this. The standard is a long way from becoming mainstream I fear however.
I’m also glad that Kingston redesigned their enclosure for the flash drive. A lot of the flash drives I have from them look a little silly and the plastic feels really cheap. Kudos to Kingston.