CDRLabs kicks off the week with a review of Crucial's new BX200 solid state drive. Aimed at the budget-conscious consumer looking to upgrade to an SSD, the BX200 offers substantial yet affordable performance gains compared to a standard hard drive. Powered by Silicon Motion's SM2256 controller and available with up to 960GB of Micron's 16nm TLC NAND, the drive delivers true 540 MB/s sequential reads on both compressible and incompressible data for faster boot up speeds and shorter application load times. The BX200 is also 40 times more energy efficient than a typical hard drive, allowing users to run their systems longer, using less power.

Patriot, a leading manufacturer of flash storage solutions, computer memory and storage, mobile accessories and gaming peripherals, today announce the addition of 128GB capacities for several of their lifestyle USB flash drives.

Consistent with the latest USB specifications, the new 128GB capacities will be USB 3.1 Gen 1, backwards compatible with USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 and reach up to 110MB/s and 20MB/s read and write speeds.

“With the growing need for more storage, Patriot is excited to expand the storage capacities of our most popular lifestyle lines,” said Meng J. Choo, Patriot’s Flash Product Manager. “These new capacities make it possible to carry even the largest HD videos in your pocket, or easily expand the storage on your current device or platform.”

Tab
One of Patriot’s top selling USB drives, the Tab was the company’s leader in its catalog of compact portable flash drives. Its minimalist design makes it the perfect companion for the Apple® faithful looking to expand their storage without breaking the bank. The metal finish makes it virtually undetectable while plugged into any laptop or PC and the quintessential take anywhere USB.

QNAP Systems, Inc. today announced the world’s first and only QTS-Android Combo NAS – TAS-168 and TAS-268, which support QTS & Android dual systems. Both systems share the same storage database, allowing users to simultaneously access media files and documents from QTS and Android™. With a compact mini-tower design, the TAS-168/268 comfortably fits in homes and small offices/workspaces. Coupled with up to terabytes of storage capacity and 4K (H.265 & H.264) HDMI-out, the TAS-168/268 is the optimal budget-friendly multimedia NAS with unlimited app applications for modern digital lifestyles.

“The QNAP QTS-Android Combo NAS TAS-168/268 is an unprecedented network storage center for file storage, backup, remote access and diverse Android™ applications,” said Hanz Sung, product manager of QNAP. “Users can enjoy video streams, use apps and manage files on a big HDMI display instead of sliding and tapping on a small screen. The TAS-168/268 makes the personal cloud experience more flexible and enjoyable.”

CDRLabs has put together a brief review of Samsung's new Bar USB 3.0 flash drive. Designed specifically for use in PC devices, the Bar is available in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB capacities. The drive features a high-quality metal casing that is water, shock, temperature, magnetic and X-ray proof. The streamlined spherical end also makes it easy to insert and extract from devices and doubles as a key ring to help prevent loss. To top it all off, the Bar offers sequential read speed of up to 130MB/s, allowing users to transfer a 2.4GB full HD video or approximately 40 hours of MP3 music in less than 20 seconds.

HyperX, a division of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., the independent world leader in memory products, today announced the launch of HyperX Savage USB Flash drive. The USB drive joins the HyperX Savage family of products including DRAM and SSDs, replacing the successful DataTraveler HyperX 3.0.

HyperX Savage USB Flash drive operates at exceptionally fast transfer speeds up to 350MB/s read and 250MB/s write, and is available in 64GB, 128GB and 256GB high capacities. The speedy USB 3.1 Gen. 1 (USB 3.0) Flash drive makes it great for users who want to spend less time waiting for files to transfer. HyperX Savage USB drive lets anyone store large digital files like movies, music, and hi-res images quickly. It features a bold design with its sleek black casing and metallic red HyperX emblem. The drive both complements and is compatible with the latest desktops, notebooks and gaming consoles such as PS4™ and Xbox One™.

Silicon Power, the world’s leading provider of memory storage solutions, today unveils the SP xDrive Z30 Lightning dual USB flash drive. The Z30 features the dual-access application with a Lightning connector and a USB 3.0 connector. By combining the two interfaces together, the Z30 can not only instantly free up the storage of iOS mobile devices at little cost but also act as a perfect bridge to link all data saved in your desktops, laptops and iOS devices. Furthermore, the SP xDrive Z30 is approved by the MFi licensing program (Made for iPod/iPhone/iPad) to ensure high quality and safety.

“While the use of smartphones and tablets is getting widespread, how to easily free up the storage of mobile devices and quickly transfer data between devices is now on the top of mind. To meet such emerging user demands, SP has been developing wide varieties of dual-interface USB flash drives for Android devices.” Said Perry Yuan, the president of Silicon Power, “And now, we want to make our series more comprehensive for all devices and applications. Therefore, we launched the SP xDrive Z30 dual USB flash drive, which is especially designed for iOS devices including iPhone, iPad and iPod to offer Apple users a simpler and also faster way to store and share.”

QNAP Systems, Inc. today announced the release of the brand new 5-bay TS-531P business NAS. A tower form factor NAS with an Annapurna Labs Alpine AL-314 quad-core 1.4 GHz ARM Cortex-A15 processor and 2GB/8GB DDR3 RAM (upgradable to 8GB), the TS-531P features RAID 5/6 support, hardware-accelerated encryption and SSD cache support. With four Gigabit LAN ports, the TS-531P can deliver up to 418 MB/s read & write speeds and allows users to install a 10GbE SFP+ or 10GBASE-T network expansion card to connect to 10GbE networks. The TS-531P also supports Container Station for LXC and Docker lightweight virtualization technologies, offering businesses an ideal cost-efficient and high-performance NAS solution.

“Business’ demands for IT virtualization have increased dramatically, but 10GbE storage solutions available on the market are still out of reach for most SMB budgets”, said Jason Hsu, Product Manager of QNAP, adding “The quad-core TS-531P is energy efficient, features a full spectrum of business applications, and provides an ideal storage base and 10GbE readiness for SMBs at budget-friendly prices.”