August 15, 2009
Written by: Kenneth Kwok
Well, it's quite a big day for Netbook Updates today, this will be our first official review of any product on our site. We decided to start out small just as we did with our contests. Not to worry though, I am quite experienced in terms of reviewing and I will do my best to review each and every product that lands in our office. Anyways, as netbooks become more and more popular, we see a growing trend of users using USB thumb drives and flash memory once again. This is especially true for netbook users that have a small capacity SSD. As this market grows again, so does the interest in more portable solutions for storage. I for one, would not carry a USB thumb drive with my netbook if it's too big or sticks out too much when plugged in. Today we will be taking a deeper look into the Gingle UP-04 4G. Although I have not heard much about Gingle or its parent company Carry Technology before, they do claim to hold over 200 patents. That seems to be pretty impressive for a company that started back in 1991.
Our review sample of the Gingle UP-04 4G was shipped using FedEx Priority from Gingle's headquarters in Taiwan. I'm surprised that this arrived so quickly since it was delivered over a long weekend. The package arrived in great condition and there were no issues with the delivery. FedEx has done a great job in delivering the package safely and quickly.
Inside the FedEx envelope was yet another envelope. This was just a standard white envelope with a Gingle logo at the top left. I've blocked off the main addresses since I don't think it is wise to reveal my or Carry Technology's address and phone numbers to anyone else. It is good to see that Gingle has taken these extra precautions that our unit comes in a pristine condition for review.
The Gingle UP-04 4G came in retail packaging as seen in store shelves and such. Best of all their design for the clamshell packaging is not sealed and has staples to keep it together. This means we won't risk cutting ourselves opening those annoying sealed plastic clamshell packaging.
The front packaging is quite nice with a blend of white, orange, brown and black. These colors meld in pretty well with the overall design. The Gingle UP-04 4G really stands out thanks to the raised plastic enclosure. I can see how this box could be appealing to any potential customers walking by a rack of USB flash drives.
The rear of the package shows the usage of the flash drive with two simple images. One about the installation and the other about the removal of the Gingle UP-04 4G. Really, this should be self explanatory but it's nice that they included some form of instruction for those of us that are still a little behind. Below that are the specifications and the system requirements translated into multiple languages. At the very bottom is the various certifications, patents and copyrights for the product itself.
Speaking of specifications, let's take a look at them before moving on.
Specifications
Smallest PD in the world!
Capacity: 2GB/ 4GB/ 8GB/ 16GB
USB 2.0/ 1.1 supported
Dimension: 19.2x14.9x7.8mm(L*W*H)
Weight: 2g
As seen in the previous image, the only thing included in the box is the Gingle UP-04 4G by itself. Don't be surprised it doesn't include anything else, since this is a USB thumb drive.
Gingle UP-04 4G is striking just to look at due to its size. I can understand why they would claim that it is the smallest thumb drive in the world. Although this can be argued, it shouldn't matter since overall, it size and weight is minimal. It comes in three colors: white, pink and black which is the one we obtained today.
The design of the Gingle UP-04 4G is just a rectangular box with a cap at the end of it. This size is more due to the USB connector more than anything; the internal components are condensed and probably make this one of the most portable USB flash drives that we have seen. The exterior shell is completely plastic with a Gingle logo at the base of the thumb drive.
In a size comparison, the Gingle UP-04 4G puts to shame all of its competitors. From left to right: the Gingle UP-04 4G, a Canadian penny, a Sandisk Cruzer Titanium, a Kingston DataTraveler 101 and finally a standard sized key. Out of all these thumb drives, the Gingle UP-04 4G is definitely the smallest but it's up to the performance to see if this drive is as good as it looks.
There really is nothing in our picture that gives a fair size comparison better than the penny. The Gingle UP-04 4G is thicker but the size is roughly that of the penny and is very portable. In fact it is so portable that I can actually see myself losing it fairly quickly.
Testing
As seen in the above photo, the Gingle UP-04 4G has a built in blue LED to display power and activity on the thumb drive. Size is a big factor in mobile computing and the Gingle thumb drive witch such a small profile really does lighten the load. It's so small that I could probably just leave it in my USB port. One thing to note before reading the following tests is that this thumb drive is actually a built in Micro SD card reader with a USB connection to allow for easy connection. The drive performance will be limited by the Micro SD card inside, which is most likely a Micro SDHC card due to the 4GB capacity.
All our tests are done on our in house testing Netbook/Notebook, the Asus N10L-X1 which uses the ICH7M Southbridge. We ran only essential programs in the background and ran it using Asus's High Performance setting.
The specifications are as follows:
Processor: Intel Atom N270 @ 1.60 GHz
Chipset: Intel 945GSE
Ram: 2 GB
GPU: Nvidia 9300M GS 256MB
Hard Drive: 250GB
Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium w/ SP1
To start off our tests, we will be using Crystal Disk Mark to test the Gingle UP-04 4G. Crystal Disk Mark tests two things on the device, the sequential read/write speed and random read/write speed. We chose to do 5 tests for each of these sections meaning the numbers are averaged from five tests for a 100MB file.
Taking a look at the sequential read and write speed, we are quite impressed by the speed for something of this size. 14.77MB/s for the read speed is excellent for this size and we like the consistency between the five tests. The 8.735MB/s write speed is again pretty good. I appreciate that the Micro SDHC card inside has some good read and write speed in our more synthetic test. The random 512K block test read speed was still impressive but the write speed left something to be desired. Although, not terrible, we would like to see better speed in this area. The final two tests were average and we really did not expect too much here from a Micro SDHC card.
Now onto our so called "real world" tests. In the Single File Transfer Test we took a file that is exactly 500MB in size and did a copy and write test with them. In our Multiple File Transfer Test, we took 141 files which were only up to three folders deep totaling to 500MB and did a write and copy test on them as well. The write test involved writing the file to the Gingle UP-04 4G, while the copy test was moving the file back to our test system. These are propitiatory tests done on Netbook Update to show the performance in normal day to day usage.
For our write test, it took 58.07 seconds to move our 500MB file to the Gingle UP-04 4G, which gives a transfer rate of 8.61MB/s which is average and fairly close to our synthetic benchmarks. The copy test only took 34.98 seconds leading to a transfer rate of 14.29MB/s which is again close to our synthetic test. Overall, the drive is fairly consistent and has excellent performance for its size.
The Multiple File Transfer Test is where the Gingle UP-04 4G got bogged down the most in terms of write speed. It took 77.81 seconds to complete which is a transfer rate of 6.43MB/s which is slower than the 8.61MB/s that we got before for the single file. Although the performance seems slow, it is actually fair for a Micro SDHC card. The copy test was equally as impressive as before, being completed in only 37.68 seconds. The rate of 13.27MB/s is very good for a test involving multiple files. So feel free to stick all your music on there and transfer it to another computer quickly and painlessly.
Throughout our tests, the Gingle UP-04 4G was consistent and quite speedy for its size. Again, the performance is limited to Gingle's Micro SDHC card inside. For its size the performance is more than fair and will transfer files quick enough, but don't expect it to be a star in performance.
So, how does the Gingle UP-04 4G stand in the competitive USB thumb drive market? Well, it looks pretty good in terms of size, portability and style. It does achieve its objective of providing discreet storage space. Heck, it may even be the smallest USB thumb drive on the market. The performance is more than fair, although it does have some room for improvement. Best of all it's covered by Gingle by a lifetime warranty which secures the future of this device. It should stand well in today's market and netbook users with smaller SSDs or even any notebook user in need of portable or additional storage space should take a look at the Gingle UP-04 4G. All in all, the Gingle UP-04 4G looks great, has good build quality, is very compact and has more than decent transfer speeds.
Shouts out to Vincent and Vivian from Gingle for providing us the sample unit
Awards: Harmony Award
Score: 82%
90%: It is near perfect, the positives far outweigh the negatives.
80%: Still a great product with minor setbacks that should not affect the reader.
More information on Netbook Update's scoring can be found on the About Us page.