Adata S701 2GB Sport Flash Drive

When it comes to moving and storing data the consumer has a variety of options from old school floppy disks to recordable optical disks, however the most common device in recent years is the USB flash drive.  This little device is nothing more than a flash memory chip with a USB interface and its popularity comes from the ease of use, price, speed, and storage capacity. 

In this review we’ll be looking at a new Flash memory drive from Adata called the S701.  The drive is part of their Sport Series line designed to be tough and handle a fair amount of abuse.

The drive features a zinc alloy metal shell and textured skin.  The shell is formed in such as way to be light weight and extremely strong.  The strength comes from the apparently seamless design and the fact it’s made from metal instead of plastic.  To enhance the look the skin is coated with a special paint and comes textured for easy gripping.  We doubt anyone will be climbing mountains with their flash drive however if you do rest assured the USB drive may survive more of the journey than you.

To help protect the drive the USB interface is retractable via a small slide grip along the edge of the drive.  Simply slide the switch forward to expose the USB interface and back to retract.  Some of you may have noticed the lack of the metal guard found on most USB devices.  Come to find out you don’t really need this piece, in fact the drive works better without it.

In terms of size the S701 is extremely small, we measured it against a typical USB drive from Patriot and even opened the drive is easily a 3rd of the size.  In the closed position it is comparable to your standard SD Memory Card (yep the one for cameras).