Other by stefan @ 2013-08-05
The new Blaze B20 USB 3.0 Flash Drive from Silicon Power comes with a fashionable design and a slide-in mechanism so we won’t need additional protective caps during transport. The drive comes with decent write speeds and very good reads, which recommends it for storing small to medium-sized files.
We would like to thank at first Silicon Power for supplying a sample of their Blaze B20 USB 3.0 Flash Drive for testing and reviewing.
“Silicon Power Computer & Communications Inc., founded in 2003 by a group of enthusiastic specialists in International Business, Global Marketing, and Technical Engineering of flash data storage industry. Well dedicated in brand image and product quality, Silicon Power has been recognized and well accepted by millions of end-users in more than 100 countries, becomes the world's leading manufacturer of flash memory cards, USB flash drives, card readers, DRAM modules, solid state disks, and portable hard drives in less than a decade. Headquartered in Taipei, we continuously established various branches throughout the world including Netherlands, Japan, Russia, Mainland China and other emerging market to reach the worldwide market.
Silicon Power's overall performance has gradually drawn great attention worldwide. In 2006, we received Taiwan Rising Star Award for our foreign business achievement. In 2008, we won 17th National Outstanding Small & Medium Enterprise Award for our outstanding progress. Moreover, with superior quality and innovative design, our products stood out in several competitions and awarded Taiwan Excellence and COMPUTEX Design & Innovation Award in 2009, 2010 and 2011. Winning trust of global consumers, Silicon Power holds a record of successive double-digit revenue growth for last seven years. According to the Common Wealth Magazine's 2010 Survey of Taiwan Top 1000 Manufacturers, our 2009 revenue growth rate was ranked No.11 among Taiwan's top 1000 manufacturers, and even ranked No.1 in semiconductor industry.
Positioned as Passionate, Creative and Hungry for Success, Silicon Power introduces products for users who are seeking individualized, unique and personal digital storage devices. With the mission of creating unprecedented experience for users, Silicon Power will endeavor to deliver a full range of high quality products that have innovative designs, distinctly unique features and comprehensive after sales services to create and fulfill your personal memory.”
• Luxurious diamond cut pattern, fashion style
• Matte sandblasting surface to avoid fingerprints and scratches
• LED indicates the usage status
• Special cap-less design with retractable USB connector
• SP Widget free download provided
• Size: 55.0 mm x 20.0 mm x 8.6 mm
• Weight: 13g
• Interface: USB 3.0, 2.0 & 1.1 compatible
• Capacity: 64GB, 32GB, 16GB, 8GB
• Color: Matte Black
• Operating temperature: 0° C ~ 70° C
• Supported OS: Windows 8/7/Vista/XP, Mac OS 10.3.x, Linux 2.6.x
• Warranty: Lifetime warranty
In this review we will take a look upon another Flash Drive for the speedy USB 3.0 bus, this time from Silicon Power. This article is not oriented only on performance, but also features a cool appearance. The product is shipped in a small plastic/cardboard enclosure, with the drive showing in front, along with the total storage space:
On the back side of the packaging, we will see some of the features SP Widget software brings (which we have covered multiple times while reviewing previous products from the same company), but also the speed ratings:
The B20 is a medium-sized USB Flash Drive, with a plastic chassis and on the front cover we will see a luxurious diamond-cut pattern. The rest of the body features a matte surface in order to keep the product fingerprint-free and also to avoid creation of scratches; on the bottom we also have a small hole for inserting an optional lanyard. A red LED indicator is placed in the middle and can be seen only when the drive is in operation:
The drive features a design with retractable port so no protective cap is needed:
When raising the USB 3.0 port, we will see some extra laser-etched inscriptions on it:
The testbench was composed from the following hardware:
CPU: Intel I7 Retail @ stock
Motherboard: Foxconn BloodRage with G42 BIOS
RAM: 3x2GB Patriot PVT36G1600LLK 1600MHz
Video: Sparkle GTX 470 with stock and OMNI A.L.C.
Power Supply: Nexus RX-8500 850W modular
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 500GB 7200.11 & OCZ Vertex 4 240GB SSD
Case: Thermaltake Armor+ LCS, stock cooling
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64
ASUS U3S6
The Blaze B20 USB 3.0 Flash Drive comes formatted FAT32:
On the drive we have found preloaded some extra files, which aid us in completing the product registration much faster:
A new browser window will open for activating the lifetime warranty:
To determine the flash drive read speeds, the HD Tune v5 utility was used:
To measure the real life performance, I have used the Total Commander application to copy to the flash drive and from the flash drive the same file and recorded the transfer speeds, when they have stabilized.
File Copy
File Read
The latest B20 USB 3.0 flash drive from Silicon Power is oriented towards fashion thanks to its matte sandblasted surface and interesting diamond check design. The internal red activity LED will let us know when read/write operations are performed and the manufacturer has opted this time for a retractable USB 3.0 connector, without the need of attaching a protective cover.
Regarding the drive performances, this product does not break and records, with speeds nearing 10MB/s when copying data to the device and about 115MB when reading data. These specs make it an ideal device for transporting files of small to medium size.
The B20 drive can be found in 8GB, 16GB, 32GB and 64GB flavors with the following MSRPs:
8GB: $12.7
16GB: $19.3
32GB: $36
64GB: $62.8
We would like to thank again to Silicon Power for making this review possible!