CONCLUSION

   We are just days away from entering 2013 so we were somewhat surprised to see the performance levels of the Firma F80 32GB USB flash drive, in a bad way i must say. So because i personally wanted to make sure that this is the kind of performance one can expect from such tiny USB flash drives i decided to also get a Kingston DTSE9 16GB USB flash drive (mainly because of their similarities) to see just how well it would do compared to the F80 and to my surprise it did slightly worse in most tests. Certainly the differences in performance between both drives are small but that way we verified that there wasn't something wrong with the drive at hand. Certainly the fact that the F80 outperformed the DTSE9 in the majority of the benchmarks we used (4 more) is a bonus which matters quite a bit when comparing similar products. Quality-wise both the F80 and the DTES9 feature metal casings but the one of the F80 does feel a bit better (smoother) and according to Silicon Power they used zinc alloy for the casing (offers corrosion protection, temperature and wear resistance) just like Kingston does with their DTSE9.

   With a current retail price tag set at around USD25 inside the USA (Amazon) and at 22Euros inside the EU the Firma F80 32GB USB flash drive by Silicon Power is a real catch especially if you don't own a USB 3.0 compatible system. However even for people who do the size, quality, design and weight of the F80 should be more than enough for them to make it part of their keychain (i did). Granted it may be light years apart from the fastest USB 3.0 drives available today but it's faster (and better looking according to what most people i showed them to said) than its direct rival the DTSE9 by Kingston and because of that it gets our Golden Award.

PROS

- Build Quality (Zinc Alloy Casing)
- Design
- Size/Weight
- Performance (Compared To The DTSE9)
- Price (For Some)

CONS

- Current Availability