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Super Talent has given the Pico-C drives an additional trick too, rating them as waterproof. In reality all flash drives should survive submersion as long as they're dried out before being used, but having the manufacturers reassurance that a quick dunking in H₂O, or more likely a C₈H₁₀N₄O₂-infused liquid, won't lead to your flash drive's premature death.

Such claims need testing, and I was pleased to see that after copying a few files onto the drive before "accidentally" dropping it into a glass of water caused absolutely no damage. All that I needed to do was give the drive a quick wipe on my jumper to dry it off and plug it in - simplicity itself.

Adding to this functionality the drive also offers a pretty decent level of performance. Using Vista Service Pack 1 x64 and a 726MB file, the 8GB drive averaged a write speed of 8.3MB/s and a read speed of 23.6MB/s. Using a folder comprising 150-odd MB of various Word documents and images, slightly slower 5.2MB/s write and 21.4MB/s read speeds were obtained.

Subjectively the drive was just fast enough that transferring files doesn't take so long as to cause real frustration, but we'd always like to see faster flash chips being used - especially on the write speed front. Considering the teeny tiny size and the comparatively huge capacity, though, the speed is more than accetable. Last in this area, while you probably wouldn't use a drive like this for Windows ReadyBoost I can report that it is compatible should you wish to do so.

Verdict

When all is said and done Super Talent isn't selling this drive off the back of its performance. The unique selling point is clearly the cramming of a large storage capacity into such impressively small dimensions. Add in the attractive price and it's clear that the 8GB Pico Drive is a real winner. What more can I say?

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