One of the reasons why the Pico drives are so small is because they don't have a regular USB connector. The connector still fits in every USB port but you have to make sure you don't insert it the wrong way as these small connectors are a bit less foolproof than full-size USB connectors.
Performance
One of the most important things about a flash drive is the performance. To check if the Super Talent Pico is fast enough I benchmarked the drive in HD Tach and ATTO.
The Super Talent Pico has a burst read speed of 34.9MB/s, an average read speed of 30.7MB/s and a random access time of 0.4ms. It's not the fastest drive I've seen but an average read speed of 30.7MB/s is more than adequate for a flash drive.
ATTO Disk Benchmark
Next I tested the performance in ATTO. This program was configured to transfer 8MB of data to the drive in blocks from 1KB to 1MB.
I did this test three times and I immediately noticed that the write speed is very slow when you transfer files with a capacity of 1KB to 4KB to the drive. All flash drives I tested in the past were slow at transferring very small files but none of them were as slow as the Pico drive. With larger files the transfer speeds pick up, the read speed is very good at almost 35MB/s but the write speed is only 8.62MB/s. A larger flash drive from Super Talent that I reviewed last year achieved a write speed of 23.5MB/s which is about 2.5x faster. I guess you can't combine a very small form factor with top notch performance.
Conclusion
The Super Talent Pico 8GB offers lots of storage capacity in a very small size. It has fast read speeds and according to the firm it should be available for less than $35 which is very affordable. The only drawback is the rather slow write speed but that's a problem most of these small USB drives have.
The Good Stuff
- Extremely small
- Fast read speeds
- Water resistant
The Bad Stuff
- The write speed is rather slow
I give the Super Talent Pico 8GB drive a 8.5/10 and our Seal of Approval.
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