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.

CrystalDiskMark 2.2 Results

Data throughput rates in Megabytes per Second (MB/s)
Longer bars are better

File Transfer Results
2GB File

1GB Folder

File-transfer speeds in Megabytes per Second (MB/s)
Longer bars are better

The Original is also an improvement over its predecessor when it comes to performance. We connected the drive to a Windows XP PC and tested it using CrystalDiskMark 2.2, and then we plugged it into a Mac and copied across a 2GB file and a 1GB folder containing 100 10MB files as a more real-world test.

Blister in the sun

In the file-transfer tests, the new PNY drive's lead over its predecessor also put it further ahead of the slower drives in the round-up, but alas did not bring it in among the fastest drives on test. The Original's CrystalDiskMark results were not significantly ahead of the old model's numbers.

As such, the update represents more of a form-factor change than a performance overhaul, though it is generally faster than the previous model.

The good news is the price. The 32GB Original is priced at £75, which makes it one of the cheapest of the three 32GB USB Flash drives we've tested. But if you shop around, you can pick it up for as little as £57, which is very good value for money given the capacity.

Verdict

PNY's Attaché Original isn't the fastest USB Flash drive you can buy, but it is a reasonable performer. And given the price, we think most punters will happily trade a little write speed for a large cost saving. Its small size wins it points too. ®

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