Erik - August 26, 2010

I bought this as a replacement for an old 30gb ipod that I was using in my car (a 2008 BMW 5 series with idrive). I figured this wasn’t going to be a perfect solution, but at eighty-five bucks, might be perfect enough.

First off, this does work with a BMW through the USB port. It draws little enough power that no supplemental power is required (or even possible, there’s just a single mini-usb port on it). The music files play fine. iTunes mp4 files will NOT likely play fine though, as they are ‘protected’ files that require an ipod or itunes to decode. But I don’t have much in this format, so it’s not such a concern. So as an iPod alternative, this is a reasonable and much cheaper choice.

I was able to drag my itunes library over (about 40gb worth, took an hour or two) and navigate through the folders in my navigation system pretty quickly. It takes as much as twenty to thirty seconds for the folders to come up the first time, but after that, it all works well. The music files are played as well as on the iPod, audio-quality wise. Some of the drawbacks of this method include a lack of playlists (although you can drag playlists from itunes into a folder in your browser to duplicate the files if you really want to do this) and that other ipod type functionality (mp4 playback, etc). With a smaller amount of data (a few albums worth) I was able to browse by artist as well, but with a ton of data on it, this feature seems lost on iDrive. I’m not sure what the limitation is, but it’s in the car software and not this drive.

If you’re looking for a cheap hard drive to run into a USB port on your car, this seems to be the best choice for the money and capacity. It’s also very small, but more than that, extremely light. And when it’s running, it makes no sound or vibration – it almost feels like there’s flash memory in there instead of a physical drive.

So for what this is, a cheaper, slow rpm (this is not a fast drive), low power draw, tiny external hard drive, I don’t really know how this product could be improved. It also comes with a carrying case and a couple of USB cords, as well as a couple software items (like a backup program).
Rating: 5 / 5

Ray - August 26, 2010

These new Samsung S1 drives are attractive, small, light, and fast (by USB standards). The physical design of these drives makes you rethink the notion that all USB drives were generally beginning to look the same, a drab commodity for utilitarian purposes only. Available is bright blue, deep red, blazing pink, white, and black – and all with a distinctive pattern embedded within the color – these drives easily stand out as something more akin to what Sony would have produced in the past. And due to Samsung’s native implementation of USB into the drive’s controller, there is no need for a circuit board based “bridge” adapter to attach the drive to a USB port: the USB port is attached directly to the drive itself (hence, the use of the word “embedded” in many of the product’s descriptions). This means that the drive can be both shorter and lighter than a traditional USB drive when a standard SATA or PATA drive is stuck inside of a case (but also means that you’ll likely not be able to yank the drive out of its case at some future point to repurpose it in another device). The native USB support may also account for the speed of this device, which by my unscientific measures appears to be a bit more sprightly than I normally see in a USB drive. The weight is an incredible 85 grams.

These drives are gorgeous, light, and small, and they work well. What else could you want in a portable USB drive? Five stars for size, five stars for appearance, and yes, five stars for price.
Rating: 5 / 5