Review The PNY's new Attaché Original USB Flash drive arrived just too late for our recent Fast Flash Drive round-up, but we decided to try it out nonetheless.

The Attaché Original: faster than PNY's previous top-speed stick

Like previous Attachés, the new model uses a slide-and-swivel mechanism to withdraw the USB connector from a bay at one end of the cover then rotate it out into the open and round so it's ready for connection.

What has changed is that the new version is two-thirds of the size of its predecessor - named Attaché without qualification - and that the main body of the drive is bright see-through coloured plastic. The colour depends on the capacity: purple for 4GB, blue for 8GB, red for 16GB and green for the 32GB stick.

The label is printed on paper and stuck to the cover. Not something that will bother many buyers, but it's certainly not as slick looking as drives with branding printed directly onto the plastic or formed from coloured plastic bonded to it. It's also less resistant to scratches from other, harder objects rattling around it when it's not in use. Keep it in your pocket with your loose change and we reckon it'll get real tatty real soon.

Different colours, different capacities

Looking at the drives in the round-up, the Original is also rather smaller than all them. It's 54 x 17 x 11mm when closed, and weighs 12g. Plastic it may be, but it has a solid feel to it. This is not a flimsy drive. As before, there's a lanyard anchor loop at one end of the cover, formed from the plastic of the cover itself.