Corsair Flash Voyager mini Flash Drive Review

Corsair's newest entry into the market of slim-line portable and rugged USB flash drives relies on some tried and tested Corsair designs and tries to innovate at the same time. As flash drives become cheaper and the market is saturated with competition, can they pull off a slim-line drive that provides both good value for money, performance and portability? Read on to find out if the new Flash Voyager mini with a rubberized case and a retractable USB connector is the winner.

Small and portable
Competitive pricing
Large drive capacity for such a small drive
Retractable USB port
10-year limited hardware warranty

Rather slow write speeds
Exposed USB pins prone to static damage
Can't fit into some recessed front panel USB ports
Wide body may take up more than one USB port
No USB extension lead included
No activity or status LED
No bundled software

Form Factor & Usability
As another year passes in the NAND flash industry it becomes harder to find truly innovative products that perform admirably and serve functionality to the average user. The miniature Flash Voyager Mini comes packaged in a hard plastic clam-shell that prevents excessive damage to the drive itself and firmly secures the flash drive since the drive dwarfs the packaging and may be easily lost in the frenzy of unwrapping a new tech toy.

If you've previously owned a Corsair product from the Voyager USB flash drive product line you'll be immediately familiar with the rubberized look and feel of this drive. The Corsair Flash Voyager colors of black and blue are back and are the only options for both 4GB and 8GB Mini variants. The Corsair Flash Voyager Mini features a retractable USB connector that allows the drive to be safely stored away when not in use and thus reduces any potential problems from static discharge while being transported. The mechanism for the retractable USB connector appears very durable and should not trigger without the users interaction. Since the slim USB connector does not have any shielding to protect it's exposed pins there is a increased risk when transporting the drive without the USB connector safely retracted into the flash drive case.

Evolution.... from the original Flash Voyager to the mini.

Considering the amount of USB port mounting variations that exist on today's market I am immensely surprised that there are no extras included. No bundled USB extension lead to attach the flash drive to your computer's recessed front-panel USB ports and no user guide to help coach those new to the era of NAND flash induced technology on how to effectively use this product. The drive comes pre-formatted with a FAT32 file allocation table which will suit most operating systems (Windows Vista, XP, 2000, ME, Linux 2.4 and later, Mac OS 9, X and later) and should function effortlessly across a variety of platforms straight out of the box. From the start you will have 7.51GB (8,070,799,360 bytes) available. No additional software is pre-installed on the drive.

Durability
To test the real endurance of any modern day product, I tend to refer to my 18 month old daughter who enjoys leaving bite marks on anything and everything I touch as a sign of affection. As a responsible adult I supervised her interrogation of the Corsair Flash Voyager Mini and found that none of her usual tricks of sitting, drooling or scratching managed to leave long-term scruff marks on the drive case leaving me no choice but to award the highest of marks for physical endurance on my daughters behalf.

Other mechanical endurance tests included the dreaded 10 minute eraser test which includes rubbing a common house-hold pencil eraser against the product case continously for 10 minutes to ensure no paint or silk-screened labels come off. The drive case was resilient and tough enough not to be visually damaged. As an alternative to the usual drop-test I decided to throw the drive against a brick wall at full force to see if any parts would fall off, I can gladly report that no parts of the flash drive fell off.

Lastly, since the drive is also fairly well sealed I thought it would be worthwhile doing a submersion test but unfortunately the Corsair Flash Voyager Mini had enough from all my benchmark tests and only the NAND flash controller would enumerate/install in Windows Vista /Ubuntu leaving me with an inoperable flash drive.