28 August 2008 12:00 GMT / By Stephen Patrick

There was a time when a USB memory stick was something of a novelty that offered nothing more than portable storage. These days, aside from increases in capacity, there is little to differentiate between devices.

Which is why Kingston has decided to offer extra features in its latest DataTraveler range. On the surface, this looks like a standard memory key. You'll find 4GB of storage inside, which is fairly average these days and the asking price of £15 is typical fair too.

The device is only slightly larger than a standard USB stick. However, at the back of the device is a small catch that opens to reveal a slot capable of holding a microSD card. It also supports microSDHC and M2 cards, so can easily read high-capacity memory cards as well as capacities of less than 2GB.

Kingston also offers a version for standard SD cards, which as you can imagine is considerably wider than this version but works in exactly the same way.

No doubt the best use for such a device is getting images from your camera phone to a computer that doesn't have Bluetooth, which is how we tested it. You simply plug it in and it acts like any other USB hub, so you don't need to install drivers. Transfer speeds for the memory key are fairly standard – we found we could copy 1GB of mixed files in just over 2 minutes.

Verdict

The Kingston DataTraveler Micro Reader manages to add a novel twist to the idea of a memory stick. We like how useful this version is without it impacting on size or the main reason for having one – carrying your files around with you.

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Review Recap

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Kingston

Price as reviewed

£16

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The good

Plenty of storage, small and compact

The bad

May be of limited use

Quick verdict

If you need to regularly swap data between your PC and microSD it's a worthwhile investment but it may have limited appeal

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