Stick, in which everything is right

A brief history. As probably many people, I had several USB flash drives in recent years. I was never really satisfied. Either I've lost the cap or the stick was painfully slow. Among them are well accepted manufacturers such as TakeMS, Toshiba or SanDisk. The final drive was a SanDisk Cruzer Blade. Small, light, with eyelet to attach to a keychain. However, unprotected and slowly. Meanwhile, the sides of the connector are torn me, so it's just a matter of time before the drive time can not be infected, or the contacts are damaged.
So I researched and the SanDisk Extreme Cruzer Contour found. At first I was a bit confused because of the name. Some reviews Write the U3 in the product name, some the Extreme and some just leave it away. It involves the same sticks. You are U3-capable and come from the Extreme series SanDisk. That's to recognize very clearly on the packaging. It involves the same lettering as the Extreme memory cards. ATTENTION: Sandisk also has a USB 3.0 flash drive in the range. This simply means Extreme without any additives. These are two completely under squinting diche Sticks!

Physical / processing:
The stick has a bottom (U-shaped) made of metal and the top is plastic in piano black finish. It looks very classy. A little shaky he acts already and you can hear that when you shake it. I attribute this to the fact that the housing must pass through the sliding mechanism logically from three different moving parts (the metal bottom shell, the memory unit to the plug and the slide mechanism up so you can get push the plug). Nevertheless, the design of a piece and he feels wertig in hand. Here you do not feel like to use a toy. On the top are 3 small bumps, so you can better serve the stick while pushing with your thumb and does not slip on the smooth top.
If you infect the stick, the Cruzer lettering lights up in blue. This flashes typical of USB flash drives, when accessed.
I've read several times that the drive should be too large. That I can not understand that. With the abundance of keys on the market there are many models that are significantly larger and bulkier. To make a comparison: The stick is a little wider (a few millimeters) and longer (about 1 cm) than my thumb.

Operation:
Here SanDisk has something really unique devised what I've seen so otherwise in any drive. In Normalzusatnd the plug can not be seen. Grabbing the top with your thumb, you schibet down. Then the plug is visible. The upper shell snaps easily a. One pushes now the top again before she takes with the connector unit and extends it. Now you can use the stick. If you want to push him back, to do that the other way around. Man pushes the top of the stick forward until it covers the plug. Again, it snaps back. Then you draw the top together with plug unit back and moves the stick so. In the retracted position, also folds forward a small metal flap in front of the terminal, so it is really closed and no mess or Fussl can penetrate. What here can be a little awkward to describe, is a flowing and soft hand movement in practice. You may find this is how to turn the stick and extends, just because the mechanism is so much fun. Clever solved SanDisk!

Speed:
Now we come to the supreme discipline of the stick. SanDisk specifies on the package that reads Stick with 25MB / sec and 18MB with / sec writes. Those are very good values ​​for a USB 2.0 flash drive. I stress that the drive has not been explicitly developed for USB 3.0. That, of course it works on a USB 3.0 port (backwards compatible). But an increase in speed is not attained by one.
I've done several tests and was able to confirm the test reports. The speed he holds and is in some cases even slightly above. A packed .zip archive 1.17 GB you push within almost exactly one minute to the stick. Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit is when copying at a speed of 19.1 MB / second. Here is also held what was promised! Who knows completely exaggerated advertising claims of other manufacturers, knows how much may cause actual read and write rates.
Of course, this stick breaks into the speed when many smaller files are copied. The mentioned .zip archive consisted of separate pictures with a size of 10-12 MB. I have copied this as a test folder containing the individual images. The write rate goes down to about 11 MB / second. That's still loose twice to three times the maximum writing speed of many simple sticks that floating around out there. The folder was copied to about 2 minutes. What more do you want? It's just nice to be you do not need half an hour to fill the stick. And that's important to me. Since I photograph, I move regularly Pictures folder with sizes between 1 and several GB. This has got to work quickly.

U3 function:
Honestly. The train has left for me. The idea was good. It has a system partition on the drive, on which you can install programs and can start from there. So it leaves no trace on the computer on which the stick is connected. However, the support was officially set to U3.com in 2010. Refer to the programs and to install, is annoying. Thus, I would like in 2012 no longer deal. Who something absolutely needs, may also portable versions of programs to download for free and start from the stick. This requires no more U3. The first time you plug in you will be asked if you want to use the Cruzer Contour U3 as stick or remove the U3 partition. I deleted it.

Scope of supply:
The Stick comes in a flat cardboard box and is really beautifully packaged and noble. In the package of the stick are even (piano finish with a foil protected), a small, narrow faux leather pocket for the key ring (important as the stick has no eye !!!), the warranty card (SanDisk is a Lifetime Warrantie ) and an illustrated mini-guide on how to extends the stick. Everything included what you need.

Conclusion:
Short and painless: Buy!
This USB flash drive combines elegant design, high speeds, a unique mechanism, protects the connection and on top of a leather case is also included. What more do you want?!?
I bought the stick at an unbelievable price of 16 euros here on Amazon. A euro / GB at all positive aspects. That's incredibly cheap.