SanDisk Ultra Dual 32GB USB drive for your smartphone Review

Sandisk Ultra Dual 32GB USB for your smartphone

 Im really excited to bring this little gadget to you all today.
The best things come in small packages they always say; and in this instance they are right! 

I'm a lucky girl in the fact my other half really thinks about my pressies and every now and then I find something in the post he has found for me, as he knows my weakness for clever little gadgets. So when this dual USB arrived, I didn't take in at first just how useful this Dual 32GB USB actually is. There are some things you don't really take in how clever they are till you sit and think about it.

This tiny USB has an amazing 32gb of space for me to transfer my piks and writing to and from my phone, tablet, PC and laptop; using a standard USB 2.0 connector one side and a micro USB connector the other; all in one clever little unit.

Android smartphone Users ONLY

Packaging

This teeny weeny dual USB arrives on backing cardboard blister packaging with lots of info on this clever little gadget.

 Clearly showing the main purpose of using it from your smartphone to other devices.

Description

This Dual 32GB USB Pendrive is only 3.6cm long and only 2cm wide. Its divided into two parts. One side has a USB 2.0 connector that will fit most PC's and laptops and the other side has a micro USB connector that will fit most smart phones and tablets.

Both ends are covered with a tinted brown plastic slider to protect them, each end has a small lip to make it easier to open and close it using your finger tip or nail. Inbetween is a small black plastic section which is embossed to make it extra grippy being so small.

It also has a small hole to add a keyring (needs to be slightly larger) or similar so you dont lose this little gadget.

Standard USB

Standard USB end with slider cover on.

 Slider cover back.

Micro USB

Micro USB with cover on.

Micro USB cover back ready to go.

So what would you need a Dual USB drive for?

So what's so special about this teeny weeny dual USB I hear you say...well;

• Easily transfer content between Android smartphones, tablets, PC and Mac computers.
• Instant smartphone storage for Android™ devices with both micro-USB and USB interface connections.
• Free up space on your Android smartphone for more pictures, videos, and music.
• No need to carry cables in your bag or glovebox just this Mini-me drive.

Use

Im a bit of a fan-girl of SanDisk as I have been using their compact flash cards for over 10 years right back when I first had my Canon 20D, then Canon 40D and now my Canon 7D. Finding that they have lasted and lasted with no problems we have also got the larger SanDisk USB drives too, these are the ones we have at the moment. We both really trust the SanDisk name as we have never had any problems with any of their products in over 10 years.

You can see exactly how dinky this little dual 32GB USB drive actually is from this photo.

I have my Samsung S4 and my Nexus 10 and my Kindle and my little Panasonic Lumix camera and they all have a micro USB...can you see the idea yet; what a genius  idea this is.

Whoever designed this, designed it exactly for me, I now don't need any cables to access any of these devices when I need to, I simply plugin this Drive and save any data to transfer back to my laptop or main PC. This drive is just brilliant; but with it's tiny size and its understated finesse, its easy to overlook the absolute genius of this product.

This dual USB fits firmly and securely into the charging port of my Samsung S4.

It even looks so neat and tidy, so easy to store in your purse or wallet.

 It doesn't have any wobble, it feels really secure; once its slotted in, its in.

You cant use your SanDisk Dual USB to its full advantage without downloading the SanDisk Memory Zone app to go with this.

SanDisk Memory Zone

Once you have turned on your smartphone or tablet you simply download the FREE SanDisk Memory Zone App from Google Play. (The little red squirrel.) This works hand in glove with the Sandisk Ultra dual 32GB USB as it makes it so easy to manage and back up your Android phone...sorry Apple iphone users you wont be able to use this; but if you have a Mac OS X v10.5+ you can.
With Memory Zone's intuitive graphical interface; meaning its bright colourful and super-duper easy to understand.
Move music, videos, photos and other files off your phone or tablets memory freeing up your Android powered devices internal memory. This clever app lets you quickly copy your files to the 32 GB Dual USB drive freeing up vital phone memory by moving them elsewhere, keep them on the drive or download them onto your PC or tablet.
It even works with Dropbox which we use regularly ourselves. It also works with Google docs, Sugarsync and Skydrive; although I don't have these and cant vouch for them.

 This App lets you access all the areas data is stored on your device all on 1 screen.With a few extra taps relocate your files to cloud storage or to another device. Move files around as and when you want to.

See in this colourful battery image how much space you have at a glance on your device or memory card; I love the app is so easy to use.

This clever app also offers you regular scheduled backups to ensure your photos, music, documents and other important files are always available and protected. password protect them too for extra safety.

 You can see here my phone is over half full and the USB drive is empty. I certainly need to start juggling some files around; its a refreshing change to see so much space left. On my Nexus 10 its a different matter however...eep!

Good things really do come in small packages, this SanDisk Dual USB has been invaluable to me already. I have been filling my S4's memory up rather quickly with photos and its peace of mind to know I can simply whip them off onto my 32GB drive to free-up some more space.

Where it has been amazing is with my Nexus 10, it only has 16GB memory as it was quite a price hike up for 32gb, but it fills up as soon as look at it, so its super easy to use my SanDisk Ultra Dual USB and take off my documents and pop them onto my main PC.

Why don't you use dropbox I hear you say well...the image size of the S4 are 13 million pixel and anyone who has dropbox will know how long it takes to add just 1 image to dropbox, it could take an hour for just a few images. I generally need to move 10-50 images at a time and its so easy to simply take them off and transfer them to another device or PC...just brilliant! I could kiss the genius who designed this idea.

You can listen to more music, share more videos with friends and family and watch HD movies without worrying about filling up your memory!

Watch the video below to see a full explanation of SanDisk Memory Zone App.

Using the SanDisk Ultra on my devices

Google Nexus 10 

For me I can take some of my main Canon 7D images and transfer then to my tablet for a larger screen to fiddle and edit them using the Google play photo apps. As much as I love my Photoshop some of the apps you can get nowadays are so much fun and add that extra zing to posting an instagram image. I can then post directly to instagram or on here.

Panasonic Lumix TZ30

Its also been really useful for grabbing a few images I've taken on my Panasonic Lumix compact camera straight onto my Nexus 10; rather than uploading them into Lightroom then Photoshop 6. If I just want to grab a few images to fiddle with on the apps I can skip my whole upload process on my PC which can take approx an hour or more. (don't ask Ill explain it all one day lol). If I know I have just one or two images I can grab them directly and transfer them to my S4 or my Nexus to play with in photo fx etc.

Kindle Paperwhite 2 

Its been invaluable to my Kindle Paperwhite too as I get sent a huge amount of books to review and I usually have to use the USB cable to add the mobi files. Now I can save the book files to be read on this drive and add them at anytime with no cables. You can't use any cloud transfer for Kindle yet so this is really useful.

Laptop

As I sometimes like to write in different rooms not always in the office; this has been invaluable to me to quickly transfer documents from device to device particularly to my laptop where it is easy to whip off files from my S4 or Nexus and pop them straight onto the laptop or vice versa. By taking files off directly rather using cloud you are also saving your Smartphone battery and we all know how fast that goes down when keeping the main screen on.
Also on the plus side when Im around town it makes me feel a little bit like Gadget Girl Super Spy when people see me plug something into my phone.

SanDisk 32GB Dual USB Versus my other SanDisk USB drives and card.
Battle of the read and write times to give you a rough idea of how fast or slow this USB drive is.

Read and write times

First off Gadget Girl moves with the times, BUT, both of our souped up computers are still running USB2 and so the following times might be different on your systems.
Here is a list of read and write times of a few of our other Pendrive storage devices.

Each device we uploaded exactly 1GB of  photos to the Pendrive/card (write) and then reversed it and uploaded 1 GIG images back to the PC (read).

Here are the results of read and write times.

SanDisk 2GB SD card   -   PC for 1 GIG

4MB/s write to card           = 4 minutes 28 secs

5.5MB/s read from card     = 3 minutes 1 sec

Cruzer SanDisk 8GB Drive  -  PC for 1 GIG

3MB/s write to drive        = 5 minutes 41 secs

16MB/s read from drive   = 1 minute 9 secs

Corsair Flash Voyager GT 64GB Drive  -  PC for 1 GIG

21MB/s write to drive      = 53 secs

30MB/s read from drive   =47 secs

Corsair Stealth Survivor 64GB Drive - PC for 1 GIG

12MB/s write to drive      = 1 minute 33sec

24MB/s read from drive   = 44 secs

SanDisk Dual 32GB USB drive -  PC for 1 GIG

11MB/s write to drive       = 1minute 38secs

13.5MB/s read from drive = 1minute 16secs

SanDisk Dual 32GB USB drive - Samsung S4 for 1 GIG

Write to drive = 7minutes 50 secs

Read from Drive = 3 minutes 55secs

Opinion

I absolutely love this adorable itsy-bitsy 32GB Dual USB I have already used it for so many different things and I'm using this almost everyday. You may still say you can just send the image via email, cloud or all the other invisible ways, but sometimes you just need the hard copy and the fact my larger photographic images take alot longer to save to cloud its easier to use the drive. But of course you can still load to cloud should you wish to if you only have a few images or files via the SanDisk App.

Combined with USB and this brilliant app you have an easy foolproof file assistant for your device. Take control of your memory on your phone tablet and cloud; juggle files when you need and it can be all password protected.

This little gem will pop into your pocket, purse, handbag or wallet its that tiny. My only niggle IT IS SO tiny and thats an unfair niggle when everything works perfectly; but I'm terrible at losing items this small; so its now securely attached to a small torch for times at night to transfer my secret files lol!

If you need a USB; I absolutely recommend this little drive you'll be amazed how often you use it, we don't always want to use cloud, for anyone to hack into and technology can still go down. You still need a hard way of saving your more important files and images.

Its so damn quick and easy to free up space on your android phone or tablet now.

Pro's

• Simplest way to transfer files between smartphones, tablet, PC,
• Bypass large email attachments and cloud storage fees,
• Free-up space on your devices for more music and photos and videos,
• Adds an external storage device,
• Small enough to carry and store in a purse or bag or pocket,
• Automated backup and restore using the app,
• 5 year warranty.

Cons

• Only Android smartphone users can use this.
• Slightly too small easily lost.
• Could do with a larger lanyard attachment hole.
• If you lend it to your friends you might not ever get it back!...... 

You can buy your
 Sandisk Ultra Dual 32GB USB Drive
from Amazon UK
£15.79
at time of press