SanDisk 8GB Cruzer Blade CZ50 USB Flash Drive

Functionality: perfect Quality: good Material: goodThe initial versions of the USB standard specified connectors that were easy to use and that would have acceptable life spans; revisions of the standard added smaller connectors useful for compact portable devices. Higher-speed development of the USB standard gave rise to another family of connectors to permit additional data paths. All versions of USB specify cable properties; version 3.x cables include additional data paths. The USB standard included power supply to peripheral devices; modern versions of the standard extend the power delivery limits for battery charging and devices requiring up to 240 watts. USB has been selected as the standard charging format for many mobile phones, reducing the proliferation of ... MoreFunctionality: perfect Quality: good Material: goodThe initial versions of the USB standard specified connectors that were easy to use and that would have acceptable life spans; revisions of the standard added smaller connectors useful for compact portable devices. Higher-speed development of the USB standard gave rise to another family of connectors to permit additional data paths. All versions of USB specify cable properties; version 3.x cables include additional data paths. The USB standard included power supply to peripheral devices; modern versions of the standard extend the power delivery limits for battery charging and devices requiring up to 240 watts. USB has been selected as the standard charging format for many mobile phones, reducing the proliferation of proprietary chargers.

Best Feature:Affordable with a high capacity.Value For Money:Very affordable for the size it offers.Performance:It's USB 2.0, you can't really expect very high transfer speeds, but it's still reliable and consistent enough; it goes as high as 12MB/s based on some tests.Bought a similar flash drive (turned out to be broken or fake, 16GB faked as 64GB) a few days ago from a different store that's pretending to be the SanDisk official store, didn't see any Mall tags, decided to try this one, and...I'm glad to say this one's definitely legitimate and very good! Will be buying again. 💯

Sandisk Cruzer Blade 16GB USB Flash Drive (SDCZ50-16G-B35)

SanDisk is a reliable manufacturer and I seldom have any issues with their products. This flash drive is the small form factor and fits snugly on the side of a laptop without sticking out. This is a new design with a grab tab that makes it easier to pull out of the USB slot when needed, but seems a little on the flimsy side due to all plastic construction. As long as the drive is not being pushed in and pulled out too vigorously, the plastic construction should not be a problem. The drive does seem to heat up a good bit during file transfers most flash drives do this, so the plastic housing may or may not hold up well over longterm use. Maybe Im looking for a problem that does not exist, but other reviews have mentioned the same concern.File transfer speed for USB ... MoreSanDisk is a reliable manufacturer and I seldom have any issues with their products. This flash drive is the small form factor and fits snugly on the side of a laptop without sticking out. This is a new design with a grab tab that makes it easier to pull out of the USB slot when needed, but seems a little on the flimsy side due to all plastic construction. As long as the drive is not being pushed in and pulled out too vigorously, the plastic construction should not be a problem. The drive does seem to heat up a good bit during file transfers most flash drives do this, so the plastic housing may or may not hold up well over longterm use. Maybe Im looking for a problem that does not exist, but other reviews have mentioned the same concern.File transfer speed for USB 3.1 is quick as advertised so no problems there.SanDisk includes a program to encrypt your flash drive for security if needed. The drive also comes with software that enables a Flashback feature that can be used to keep a cloudbased copy of the flash drive which automatically updates when plugging in the drive on any computer with the software installed. I found the initial file synchronization to be exceedingly slow, and suggest that the first backup on any computer be allowed to run overnight to ensure that the files are completely synchronized. If your use is smaller files such as documents or pictures, then the cloud synchronization may complete more quickly. Personally, I got a little frustrated by how long the synchronization took with a relatively small collection of TV and movie files. If you are carrying around a set of documents, term papers, or research on the flash drive to use on different computers during the day, then the cloud backup may be helpful in case you lose the flash drive, damage it, or forget to take it out of a computer. In that situation, you would be able to get to your files from the cloud if you dont have the flash drive in your possession. I mention this because I have had several friends come to me with flash drives that were damaged asking if I could recover their files, and the drives were beyond repair. Each time their flash drive had only copies of their documents didnt have any type of backup so they were up the creek. If they had a cloud backup of their flash drive that worked automatically on their computers, then they would have been OK. As it was, they lost a lot of work and learned a hard lesson about keeping backups of their valuable files.Note that the drive is formatted FAT32 formatted, so using it for large video or multimedia files over 4GB will require a NTSF reformat.Overall this flash drive does the job, is a good compact design, and comes from a reliable manufacturer.

Sandisk Cruzer Blade 16GB USB Flash Drive (SDCZ50-16G-B35)

There are countless brands of USB thumb drives out there so what makes SanDisk ultra fit flash drive different from the restIt comes with one year free flashback program that backs up what ever is saved to the drive to a cloud account. I am testing the 128 gigabytes drive and after one year, it is USD4.99 per year.The drive is small and very light. It is made out of plastic and I wish it had been made out of stronger material like metal.If you have a slow upload Internet account, putting a one gigabyte video file on it could take a while to upload the cloud account and could easily slowdown your computer. This is something you ought to know because no matter how fast your Internet download may be, many less expensive accounts have far slower upload speed.The ... MoreThere are countless brands of USB thumb drives out there so what makes SanDisk ultra fit flash drive different from the restIt comes with one year free flashback program that backs up what ever is saved to the drive to a cloud account. I am testing the 128 gigabytes drive and after one year, it is USD4.99 per year.The drive is small and very light. It is made out of plastic and I wish it had been made out of stronger material like metal.If you have a slow upload Internet account, putting a one gigabyte video file on it could take a while to upload the cloud account and could easily slowdown your computer. This is something you ought to know because no matter how fast your Internet download may be, many less expensive accounts have far slower upload speed.The Flashback also works with SanDisk ultra flash drives, as well. Somehow even after I formatted the ultra fit flash drive, the program still recognized the drive, and when I tried to use Sandisk Cruzer Glide drive older, cheaper thumb drive, the program does not work with it, nor would it work with any other brands of thumb drives so if you think you can download the program and use it with your own thumb drives without paying for one of these since it is easily downloaded from their website, you can forget it. Here is the address httpswww.sandisk.comflashbackapps It is available for Windows, and Mac operating systems.By the way this little drive gets hot. It doesnt get warm it gets hot. I dont know if this will shorten its life.I think it is very useful to save important documents for example for students since the files are uploaded to a cloud account automatically. The good thing that I did not mention about this system is that if you misplace the actual drive, the files are still there and can be restoredpretty much means you can download them onto your local computer hard drive or another thumb drive. And any files that are deleted from the thumb drive are available to be undeleted on the cloud account for 30 days. Although I have very fast download speed, my upload speed is not fast enough to patiently test the system. I wanted to upload hundred gigabytes files and delete them, and see if 100 gigabytes space will count toward the 128 gigabytes space.I dont think it is very suitable to be used as something to copy the files from one computer to another unless you logout of the flashback program, and lastly it does get very hot so I dont think it should be used for this purpose.By the way, it also comes with Sandisk SecureAccess, but for the life of me, I cant get it to even install. It wont recognize the drive even after I plugged it into a different port. So I was unable to test it.Lastly, but probably importantly, Google Chrome had a tough time logging onto the flashback website. Microsoft Edge which I seldom use works better. Chome logs on, but it wont display the status page. Reloading didnt help.I think that a cloud account and they are many of them out there now may have similar and overlapping capabilities yes, they do. But this particular drive is not expensive so if you dont have a cloud account yet, this would work well. Just remember that the first year is free, and it is as big as the drive and not something much bigger like Google cloud account which couild be massive.

Sandisk Cruzer Blade 16GB USB Flash Drive (SDCZ50-16G-B35)

PHYSICAL PROPERTIESI was looking for a small drive to replace my Verbatim Micro USB drive, which is an ultra small drive that fits in my wallet pocket. The SanDisk Ultra Fit, while approximately the same width and length, is over 3x as thick full height USB. I may see if I can take the drive apart and isolate just the flash chip to make it more portable, although it looks like this may be more difficult than on other drives Ive had due to its construction. The drive has a 1sided grip, which may be a problem for removing the device for instance, my monitor USB port has a lip on it, and the grip tucks under that, so I can only pull the drive out by the sides, which is quite difficult. If Im able to take it apart, I should be able to get a much better grip on it. The ... MorePHYSICAL PROPERTIESI was looking for a small drive to replace my Verbatim Micro USB drive, which is an ultra small drive that fits in my wallet pocket. The SanDisk Ultra Fit, while approximately the same width and length, is over 3x as thick full height USB. I may see if I can take the drive apart and isolate just the flash chip to make it more portable, although it looks like this may be more difficult than on other drives Ive had due to its construction. The drive has a 1sided grip, which may be a problem for removing the device for instance, my monitor USB port has a lip on it, and the grip tucks under that, so I can only pull the drive out by the sides, which is quite difficult. If Im able to take it apart, I should be able to get a much better grip on it. The drive is all plastic and feels pretty cheap.READWRITE SPEEDSMy tests were done on Windows 10 PC with a highend SSD using a USB 3 port. I left it in the default exFAT.When sequentially reading mixed files, I get about 80 MBs.When sequentially writing large files 500 MB per file, it very briefly started at about 55 MBs then quickly dropped to 30 MBs. After copying about 10 GB, it dropped to 1620 MBs before finally dipping to about 5 MBs in the last 5 GB. Keep in mind there werent any files on the drive yet and all files were copied at once, so the lag in the last 5 GB doesnt make a lot of sense.When sequentially writing small files KB to a few MB, it is no faster than a USB 2.0 drive, averaging around 1 MBs write speed.INTERFERENCEIve never had a USB 3 drive cause interference with my Logitech mouse wireless transmitter, but this one does for some reason. It causes the mouse cursor to lag and jump around the screen. Ive put an extender on the mouse transmitter and so far that seems to work, although I havent tested it extensively.TAKEAWAYIt doesnt perform much better than the Verbatim drive it replaces, but it does have a lot more storage, which I needed. And its cheap. If I can take it apart okay, it will be worth the upgrade, although Id much prefer to pay more for a quallity halfheight USB 3 drive that performed well, but they dont seem to exist.

Sandisk Cruzer Blade 16GB USB Flash Drive (SDCZ50-16G-B35)

Overall, I like this device. It has a few extra features that I am not sure how they fit into my life but it is not required. I will discuss more below.UnboxingThe device is pretty simple. It has the USB drive, a voucher for the flashback software and a voucher for RescuePRO software.Build qualityPretty good This is the 128 GB model. I went for this one since it has USB 3.1 support for higher speeds. The device is extremely tiny and will be great if you leave it plugged into a laptop as it does not protrude too much.The design has a curved indentation that is functional at the end, for one it provides a little extra grip to grab it when pulling it out, second it has a hole in it so you can connect it to a lanyard keychain.PerformanceIt has plenty of storage space at ... MoreOverall, I like this device. It has a few extra features that I am not sure how they fit into my life but it is not required. I will discuss more below.UnboxingThe device is pretty simple. It has the USB drive, a voucher for the flashback software and a voucher for RescuePRO software.Build qualityPretty good This is the 128 GB model. I went for this one since it has USB 3.1 support for higher speeds. The device is extremely tiny and will be great if you leave it plugged into a laptop as it does not protrude too much.The design has a curved indentation that is functional at the end, for one it provides a little extra grip to grab it when pulling it out, second it has a hole in it so you can connect it to a lanyard keychain.PerformanceIt has plenty of storage space at 128 GB a little less available. I ran Crystal Disk benchmark on it and got read speeds of 134.6 MBs read and 51.7 MBa write. This speed is actually BETTER than what is advertised on the website 130 MBs. In transferring a 3.3 GB file I got between 130 140 MBs read and between 35 70 MBs write. It looks like it had a burst speed for the first third then slowed down to the lower speeds.FeaturesIt is mostly just a great performing small thumb drive But... Sandisk tossed in a few goodies with it. First it has the usualSanDiskSecureAccess software. This is pretty basic software but it allows you to password secure files on the thumb drive that are encrypted and unrecoverable if your drive is lost.Second, it comes with a new software called SanDisk Flashback. To use this, you will need to install the software on your PC Mac. It works very seamlessly and works similar to drop boxOneDriveetc. When you log into the website, you will see any photos and files on your home screen. The interface is nice and seems to prioritize photos. There is a tab for devices which will let you see all of your drives that support the feature. Here is where it gets cool. If you uploaded a nonencrypted filed not in the vault software to the thumb drive, it will also upload a copy to Flashback which will allow you to download any files on your thumb drive cloud to any computer that you access the website from. I have yet to fully integrate this into my work flow but I see a lot of potential for this. Similar to other cloud storage, you can also share links to your files.At first I asked myself why do I need this I have Dropbox and upload things to the cloud already. The advantage of this drive appears to me that you can leave your drive in your laptop permanently expanding storage and always having a local version installed and no longer needing to bring it with me when needed. I know Dropbox and other cloud drives can store local files but this one keeps the storage separate from the main drive. You also have the added ability to take the drive with you if you wish for faster transfers to computers that might not have download speeds needed for a file. In short, it gives you options.SummaryProsConvenientCompactVery fastConsFeatures possibly redundantEasy to loseNo phone app as of yet, only PC and MacSome users will think this is redundant, especially since it costs a few bucks after the firstyear trial to be fair it is dirt cheap, my 128GB will cost 4.99 a YEAR, not month when my trial is over. For others, you might be able to find some very good use out of this ability. I personally think it is slightly redundant, but it is also extremely convenient and allows me to separate certain types of files for a much cheaper price than cloud options. For example, Google drive costs 19.99 per YEAR, this device will only charge 4.99 per YEAR for 128GB, you will save even more if you get a 256GB model.I cant really find any faults in this feature and in the thumb drive. Used properly, you might be able to replace your cloud storage

Tight fit is good

I have used these several times having bought a pack of four. I have no complaints, they do the job at a reasonable speed. However, there is one very good point: They are a very tight fit in some USB sockets, notably the one on a friend's TV set. She lives in a care home and I recently put some music tracks on a Cruzer Blade, plugged it into the TV set with only slight difficulty mainly due to the position of the socket, and away it went! The User Interface is appalling, as is quite common on TV sets, but that is not SanDisk's fault. So one day I called in and the Cruzer Blade had disappeared. I reported it missing, the staff told me it had been found on the floor. I knew this could not possibly be true as these devices are such a tight fit that it could not have ... MoreI have used these several times having bought a pack of four. I have no complaints, they do the job at a reasonable speed. However, there is one very good point: They are a very tight fit in some USB sockets, notably the one on a friend's TV set. She lives in a care home and I recently put some music tracks on a Cruzer Blade, plugged it into the TV set with only slight difficulty mainly due to the position of the socket, and away it went! The User Interface is appalling, as is quite common on TV sets, but that is not SanDisk's fault. So one day I called in and the Cruzer Blade had disappeared. I reported it missing, the staff told me it had been found on the floor. I knew this could not possibly be true as these devices are such a tight fit that it could not have just 'fallen out', which was the explanation given. Indeed, one of the staff tried to pull it out of the TV socket and couldn't do it! I rested my case. The home does have a few light-fingered residents, possibly light-fingered cleaners, but the home don't accept this and if one complains too much one gets barred. So it is a good job they are sold at such a low price too.