We would like to thank at first Silicon Power for supplying a sample of their Mobile X31 OTG USB 3.0 Flash Drive for testing and reviewing.

 

 

 

About Silicon Power:

 

“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.”

Product Features:

 

- Support data transmission between Android™ Smart Handheld Devices (microUSB) and PCs (USB)

- Intelligent 360° swivel-cap design, easier operation without worries about cap loss

- Plug and play?no cables required

- Sturdy metal exterior with stylish plastic cap

- COB (Chip-on-board) technology

- Vibration proof

- Mini and lightweight, easy to carry and store

- Exclusive free-download file management App?SP File Explorer

- Recuva File Recovery, allowing recovery of erased files, such as digital photos, documents, music and videos

 

Product Specifications:

 

- Size?33.0 x 12.3 x 8.1 mm

- Weight?3.3 g

- Capacity?8GB?16GB?32GB

- Color?Silver & Black

- Material?Metal / Plastic

- Interface?USB 3.0 / USB 2.0 / USB 1.1 Compatible / micro-USB (Charging is not supported)

- Supported OS Operation Systems?PC- Windows 8 / 7 / Vista / XP / 2000, Mac OS 10.3.x, Linux 2.6.x; Mobile device- Android 4.1.X* / windows phone 8* (*For mobile devices that support OTG functions)

- Certification?CE/FCC/BSMI/Green dot/WEEE/RoHS/KCC

- Warranty?Lifetime warranty

 

Silicon Power have recently released another USB 3.0 Flash Drive, but this time featuring OTG characteristics too for moving data with ease between mobile devices which support this particular function; the product is shipped inside a cardboard/plastic slim packaging, which shows us the total storage space, compatible devices and some other features the product does incorporate:

 

 

 

 

X31 features a sturdy metal exterior with a swivel-cap design which can be rotated 360 degrees, so we won’t need a removable cover which in some cases can be lost; on one of the sides, Silicon Power has placed the total drive capacity along with the supported USB bus version:

 

 

 

As mentioned before, the plastic cover can be fully rotated so one of the ends will be protected while the other is in use:

 

 

 

Here is how the drive does look with the USB 3.0 port available and the OTG port protected by the cover:

 

 

 

 

The plastic cover does also have a small pre-drilled hole for attaching a lanyard which is not included in the package:

 

 

 

The testbench was composed from the following hardware:

 

CPU: Intel I5 4670K Retail @ stock

Motherboard: Gigabyte Z97-UD5H

RAM: GeIL Black Dragon 2x4GB DDR2133 (@1600)

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

The Silicon Power Marvel M70 USB 3.0 Flash Drive has arrived formatted FAT32:

 

Some data was preloaded on the drive which aids product registration:

 

 

To determine the flash drive read speeds, the HD Tune v5 utility was used:

 

 

HD Tune File Benchmark

 

 

Summary Graph (Read Performance)

 

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

Summary Graph (Real-life performance)

 

 

ATTO

 

 

Anvil

 

 

The helper utility from Silicon Power has been updated to a new version, which seems to also mean a complete reskin. The menu placement is pretty much the same though and there we will find Project Backup, Data Encryption, My Favorite Backup and so on; the lower area of the interface shows how much space we have left:

 

 

From the Project Backup tab, we can define new backup tasks to be saved onto the drive:

 

 

Data Encryption tab is pretty self-explanatory:

 

 

The favorite websites from different web browsers can be saved to the drive from the next menu:

 

 

The files can be also classified in different pre-defined folders:

 

 

We can also work with online cloud storage:

 

 

From the Storage Device Information menu, we can check out the current status of the drive:

 

 

The last two menus are Download Norton which will redirect us to a trial version but also Language Choose from where we can select the language of the GUI:

 

 

Silicon Power has recently introduced its lightweight mobile USB 3.0 OTG drive which can be used to transport and transfer data between multiple mobile devices and while its read speeds are pretty good, it falls a bit short on the writes; considering that the Android and Windows tablets which support this function are USB 2.0, the lower write speeds should not be such a bit inconvenience, but when copying data from our PCs to the drive, we can see it lagging a bit.

 

Thanks to the 360 degree swivel cap design, we do not need a cover for the drive which can be lost in some cases and is quite easy to manipulate. Also, the COB (Chip on Board) technology X31 employs offers complete protection against vibrations.

 

The product we have just tested is available at Amazon.com for just about 17 USD.

 

Silicon Power Mobile X31 OTG USB 3.0 Flash Drive is Recommended For:

 

 

We would like to thank again to Silicon Power for making this review possible!