27 July 2009 9:24 GMT / By Richard Knight

You may not be familiar with the company Leyio, but you may be familiar with their products as for many years they’ve been in the personal satellite navigation business making products for HP, palm and even those ViaMichelin devices. In their latest incarnation they’re making personal storage devices for consumers and the technology trendsetters amongst us.

Leyio initially wanted to create a product that can transmit data over various wireless technologies, such as Bluetooth, infrared, wireless USB and others. For the first of many devices, with another Leyio due on the scene in September, they’ve concentrated on Ultra Wideband, one of the first companies to run with this technology.

As a technology this can beam data from Leyio to Leyio up to 10 metres apart and at a maximum speed of 10MBps, which is 100 times faster than Bluetooth and four times faster than Wi-Fi.

It’s best to start to think of a Leyio device as a different type of USB flash drive, as at the heart of the product it’s more or less what it is. Only it’s much more than just that, as it has a 1.8-inch OLED high quality screen used for controlling the whole device when away from a PC.

Getting data onto the device can done by USB cable which is also used for charging. In terms of capacity, the Leyio can hold 16GB of files which is a respectable enough size for most people. Just in case it wasn’t, there’s also a 2GB USB flash stick built-in to the device making the total capacity 18GB.

This 2GB of extra storage can be used to get data and files from the Leyio to someone else quickly, if a USB cable isn’t around or another Leyio device isn’t present. You can also connect any other USB drive and transfer files across for sharing.

Leyio holds all its data very securely, as the only way to power on this Linux run device is through a biometric finger print reader. Once powered up you can connect to a PC or Mac for placing data on to the drive, or scroll through the menus which operate the Leyio.

The first menu has a picture icon, where you can see all images stored on the device and can then choose to send them to the 2GB card or to another Leyio. Once synchronised with another device, sending any form of data can be done as easily as a flick of the wrist – which coincidently is the exact process used for initiating the data transfer.

The next few menu items list music and video content on the Leyio, sadly it’s only listed as those items cannot be played back although they can be sent in the usual methods.

Moving on from there are some menus which can house all your contact information, for the likes of Gmail and Outlook to use and another menu that can hold shortcuts to your personal profiles on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

The great thing about this is that when you want to exchange contact details, all your various informations can be passed along easily, either dropped off on to a USB stick for a person to use or it can be beamed across to another Leyio.

Verdict

Besides being just a large dumb 16GB flash drive, it’s also a smart 16GB flash drive with all the content being accessible for sharing without being hooked to a PC.

To be really useful and to use the full functionality it’s been bought for, a second UWB Leyio device is needed otherwise it’s just an expensive flash drive. For the first in hopefully a long series of devices it’s a very promising start in usefulness and the technology behind it.

Score

Review Recap

Made by

Leyio

Price as reviewed

£159

The good

16GB + 2GB of storage, USB, fast transfer speeds

The bad

Really need a second Leyio device to be completely useful

Quick verdict

The first "smart" flash drive with high speed wireless data transfer, useful for sharing data without relying on a computer or even without a second Leyio device

Key specs

OLED, USB

Score

Winner

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