Today I am going to review Strontium Jet USB 3.0 Flash Drive. I am using a 16GB version to review.
Strontium
"Strontium Technology Pte Ltd is a global leader in PC and flash memory manufacturing currently based out of Singapore. As of today, we have a total manufacturing capacity of 500,000 memory modules and 7,000,000 flash products every month.
Founded in 2002, we have since grown from strength to strength. Today, our operations span varied territories; so as to best serve our customers across Australia, New Zealand, South East Asia, China, Taiwan, India, Middle East, Africa, US, Canada and Latin America. In total, we maintain a strong market presence in over 30 countries.
Here at Strontium, customers, employees and suppliers alike are viewed with equal importance and significance. This is instrumental in fostering a strong, cohesive and collaborative working culture - one that allows for the forging of strong industrial and customer relations.
Our in-depth understanding of the memory market, coupled with expert product knowledge, gives us a true competitive advantage over our industry peers."
- from the About Us Page of the Company
Packaging
Sorry, but this time I don’t have any pics of the packed Pen Drive since I bought it way back before I started this blog. So I didn’t take any pictures back then. But I remember the packing well. Remember my review about the Moser Baer Swivel Pen Drive? He packing is similar. So the quality of packing is good, if not great and box packed! But I guess, that’s the case with most pen drives though HP Pen Drives are extremely well packed. So I’d say, the packing is good enough, not great.
Looks
Just take a look at the pics of the Pen Drive I have got for you guys. That’d be enough to prove you that the pen drive really looks cool. I bought a blue coloured Strontium Jet Flash Drive as you can see. The small rope kind of at the other end is one that I attached to it from my former HP pen drive. The Strontium Jet Flash is NOT accompanied with that. In all, the cool blue colour looks cool, my pics might be bad! :P Also I have seen the black variant, it too looks totally amazing!
Build Style & Quality
The Strontium Jet USB 3.0 Flash pen drive is a classic cap style pen drive and it looks real cool. The only problem is that you got to take care of its cap at times! Haha! As if it really matters, but it looks good that way.
The build quality is good. I mean it’s been more than a year since I bought this pen drive and I have carried it to college, etc. many times in my bag or pant-pockets. That means the handling has been both good and rough, but the pen drive has survived even when pressed between 3 books, if you know the size of engineering books, you’ll have an idea how much toughness this beauty has survived! :D
Dimensions
| Length | 59.56 mm |
| Width | 18.5 mm |
| Height | 8.5 mm |
| Weight | 11.3 gm |
Technical Specs
I have used the Windows checkdisk utility to get these specs which I have shown above. You can see the Pen Drive is 16GB. I have formatted it in NTFS and I get 14.8 GB in that case. Sorry I cannot share benchmarking specs for this pen drive since I don’t have the utility installed with me for now.
The good thing is that this pen drive is USB 3.0 This means the new version of USB interface, which is quite faster as compared to the earlier one. The USB 3.0 ports are blue in colour, that’s how you recognize a USB 3.0 device. Although this pen drive has a USB 3.0 interface, the speed is not that high. Though, the speed is good enough to not to be troublesome since most of the pen drive available are USB 2.0 and thus we get the slow 4-5 mbps from most pen drives generally. Hence, a 40-50 mbps pen drive is uber cool! :D
| Operating Temperature | 0°C - 70°C |
| Humidity | 20 % to 90 % |
| USB | USB 1.1, 2.0, 3.0 |
| Power consumption | 1.2V |
| Power Supply | DC 4.5V ~ 5.5V from USB port |
Speed
As I told you guys this pen drive is a USB 3.0 pen drive, the speed is ought to be good, and so is the case. I have got speeds as high as 40-50mbps constant during data transfers from this pen drive, and around 20mbps when writing to this pen drive. However during the time of testing the pen drive for this review I have got the following results:
| Interface | Max. Speed | Min. Speed | Average Speed |
| USB 2.0 READ | 40 mbps | 22.8 mbps | 31.4 mbps |
| USB 2.0 WRITE | 20 mbps | 9.2 mbps | 14.6 mbps |
| USB 3.0 READ | 56.7 mbps | 27.5 mbps | 42.1 mbps |
| USB 3.0 WRITE | 38.2 mbps | 10.8 mbps | 24.5 mbps |
As you all can infer from this data that the minimum speed of this pen drive (viz. write speed at USB 2.0 Interface) is ~9.2 mbps which is more than that of a typical USB 2.0 pen drive on a USB 3.0 port! This is enough to make you all realize that this pen drive performs awesome speed-wise. And in case you have got USB 3.0 ports on your laptop/computer, well! Then you will be able to see real awesome data transfer speeds.
Reliability
I have stored data for as long as 3 months in one go and have seen it being persistent. During that time I have added and removed parts of data (keeping this test data intact) and found no problems of data getting corrupt/lost. Thus, I believe Strontium Jet USB 3.0 Flash Drive is a reliable external storage device.
Price
I bought Strontium Jet USB 3.0 Flash Drive in February last year (2013) at a price of 569 INR (which is currently ~ $9.344 with $1 = 60.89 INR today). I don’t have any recent prices since I haven’t done a price check on this one since a long time, but since I have seen the price of computer equipment rising like anything in last 8 months, I guess it might not be available at a lower price, if not a higher price than this.
So if you get this pen drive at anything around 500-560 INR, it is a steal deal and you must buy it since the USB 3.0 pen drives are not too common as yet, and hence the price of most of them starts from >800 INR.
Warranty
Strontium Jet USB 3.0 Flash Drive comes with a 5 Years Hassle-free Strontium Limited Warranty. Strontium says:
”Strontium brings you free Door-to-Door warranty service in India in association with Blue Dart, India’s leading courier company. The initiative, a first of its kind by a memory company in India, will serve to enhance Strontium’s after-sales service in the country. Under the offer, users of Strontium products can now avail warranty service from the convenience of their home or office without having to physically visit the retailer.” Read more here
But since I don’t have any experience of their warranty service (and I wish I don’t need it too! LOL!) I cannot comment on it.
Strontium Contact Information
Official Website: http://www.strontium.biz/
Monthly Promotions for discounts, etc.: http://www.strontium.biz/products/monthly-promotion
New Delhi
Flat N0-805, Madhuban Building,
Building Number-55,
Nehru Place,
New Delhi-110019
Tel: +91- 11 – 40568675
RMA : techsupport@strontium.biz
Email: indiasales@strontium.biz
More here
Verdict
Strontium Jet USB 3.0 pen drive looks good; the blue colour is totally amazing. With a good speed performance, and reliable data storage, I give this pen drive 4.5/5 because it is well priced. The downside is that, many people don’t trust Strontium and frankly, I myself am not sure how good the company actually is. But honestly, my experience with the micro SD cards and pen drive of Strontium has been good enough to find it moderately trustworthy. It is a good buy, and if you want to buy a good flash drive at a nice price (500-600 INR for 16 GB USB 3.0), grab Strontium Jet USB 3.0 pen drive without much thinking!
