Sandisk has announced a new range of portable USB drives at CES this morning, announcing the Ultra Dual USB Drive 3.0 with microUSB and USB connectors. The drives can be used on any PC with the standard USB connection but their real utility lies in use with mobile phones and tablets which support USB OTG. Sandisk is specifically targeting Android users also announcing a companion app, available on Google Play which will let you easily manage and share your files.
While they’ve had a range of USB 2.0 drives available in this form factor previously, these new drives offer all the advantages of the speed of USB 3.0. The new Sandisk drives can transfer at speeds of up to 130MB/s. The Ultra Dual USB Drive 3.0 will be available in three sizes: 16GB, 32GB and 64GB, with prices ranging from US$22.99 to US$64.99.
The companion app, SanDisk Memory Zone, which is available for free from Google Play will let you :
We’ve approached Sandisk Australia about a possible launch here in Australia, but at this stage, availability in Australia hasn’t been announced as yet.
Perhaps if your phone doesn’t support microSD cards these could be very useful, but are there any other benefits of one of these over a microSD card?
I switch turn my phone into a Hotspot and then use Wireless Transfer Pro to move files wirelessly to my Surface Pro 3 from my Nexus 6 and it works incredibly well. I get transfer speeds of around 6Mb/s which is plenty quick enough for moving most things. Entire movies take a minute or two, but I can live with that.