INTRODUCTION

   Have you ever gone to visit a friend or attend a meeting and just before you left you decided that you needed to copy some data only to find out that the capacity of the storage device you carry with you was just insufficient for the task? Well that used to happen to me quite a bit until i finally decided that it was better to have a very large USB flash drive mounted on my keychain and perhaps never need to use all of its available space than to need more space and not have it (for me the same logic applies to power supply units as well). Times change however and so now even a 32GB USB flash drive which was considered as enormous not too long ago might not be enough to hold everything you may want to store. Fortunately with all the price drops occurring around us all the time the price/capacity ratio crown now belongs to 64GB models and today we will be taking a thorough look at one such model the Marvel M70 64GB USB 3.0 USB Flash Drive by Silicon Power.

   Silicon Power Computer & Communications Inc., founded in 2003 by a group of enthusiastic specialists of flash data storage industry. Well dedicated in brand image and product quality, SP has been recognized and well accepted by millions of end-users in more than 100 countries, becomes the world’s leading manufacturer of flash memory cards, USB flash drives, card readers, DRAM modules, solid state disks, and portable hard drives in less than a decade. Headquartered in Taipei, we continuously established various branches throughout the world including Netherlands, Japan, Russia, Mainland China and other emerging market. With superior quality and innovative design, our products stood out in many competitions and awarded with numerous well-known design awards, such as Taiwan Excellence, COMPUTEX Design & Innovation Award, red dot design award, iF Design Award and IDEA . Winning trust of global consumers SP holds a record of successive double-digit revenue growth for last ten years. For SP, the product we introduced is not only a digital storage device but also a real promise to create and preserve your most valuable memory in every moment.

   Compared to most USB flash drives currently available by Silicon Power the Marvel M70 line is quite unique since the housing of its three available models (32/64/128GB) is made out of Zinc Alloy and features a retractable connector design. Normally i prefer USB flash drives that feature rugged rubber or metal housings but Zinc Alloy is right after those in my list (Zinc Alloy USB flash drives are also smaller and more elegant usually). Silicon Power also offers lifetime warranty on the Marvel M70 line and has also given the housing an ergonomic design which according to them makes it easier to "handle" the drive but to me it just looks like one of the very old formula cars. So in the quality and design areas the Marvel M70 is doing very well but what about performance? According to Silicon Power the Marvel M70 can reach read speeds of up to 230MB/s and write speeds of up to 80MB/s so the time has come for us to find out if these numbers are accurate.

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

PACKAGING AND CONTENTS

We received the Marvel M70 inside a small box that has an clear plastic opening at the front that lets you take a look at the drive itself, the company logo, the zinc-alloy "feature" and the performance numbers achieved by the drive.

Listed on one side of the box are the main product features and on the other the amount of media files one can store in 64GB.

The main features are listed at the rear of the box in 14 languages along with the OS compatibility list and company contact information.

Unfortunately the only thing inside this somewhat large box (for a flash drive) is just the drive itself.

THE MARVEL M70 64GB

The just 16.8g heavy drive measures 56.6mm in length, 20mm in width and 12.4mm in height so once again we placed it next to several drives we have here to have a better idea about its size.

Just the company logo is placed ontop of the drive (and not very easy to see under light).

Two lanyard holes are present at the front of the drive so you should have no problem attaching it to your keys.

The retractable connector design is very convenient since you don't have to worry about misplacing the protective cap.

This unique serial number found on the USB connector guarantees that you have a genuine Silicon Power drive.

TEST BED

TESTING METHODOLOGY

   Since flash drives are basically plain storage media devices just like solid state drives and hard disk drives we are using almost the same testing methodology to successfully record the achieved performance numbers. The benchmark suites used are HD Tach RW (Read Speeds / Long Bench 32mb Zone Testing), HD Tune Pro (Read speeds), Sisoftware Sandra Pro (Read / Write speeds), AIDA 64 Engineer Edition (Average Linear Read / Random Read speeds), Crystal Disk Mark x64 (100MB-1000MB Read / Write speeds) and finally ATTO (Max Read / Max Write speeds). Every test is repeated a total of 6 times after which the average performance numbers are recorded into our charts (0 = we were unable to complete that test).

   All tests are performed with our main rig running Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate x64 Service Pack 1 complete with every update until September 11th 2014. As always for comparison purposes in the charts you will also find many other flash drivers which have been tested using the same exact test bench as the one in this review (we really can't keep every flash drive we get forever and also even if we could testing them all again and again would simply not be possible).

TEST RESULTS - AIDA64 / ATTO

TEST RESULTS - HD TACH RW / HD TUNE PRO

TEST RESULTS - SISOFTWARE SANDRA PRO / CRYSTAL DISK MARK X64

CONCLUSION

   The Marvel M70 64GB USB 3.0 flash drive lived up to the numbers Silicon Power advertises as you can clearly see from our charts and along with the very nice looking zinc alloy enclosure i can say that we all liked it. What i personally found a bit strange was that because the enclosure is somewhat large in size to accommodate the retractable connector it's not solid like other zinc alloy USB flash drives we've tested in the past and since Silicon Power obviously wanted to keep the weight to a minimum the Marvel M70 feels way too light (and empty). That being said we still can't figure out how it's outperformed by its predecessor the Marvel M60 which we reviewed roughly 2 years ago. Normally i wouldn't even mention this but the difference in performance is not really small so if you care about performance and not so much about the quality of the enclosure then the Marvel M60 model is the obvious choice.

   With a current price tag set at USD31.99 inside the USA (Amazon.com) and 57.23Euros inside the EU (Amazon.de) the Marvel M70 64GB USB 3.0 flash drive doesn't only look very nice thanks to the small zinc alloy enclosure but it also offers lots of space, very good read/write speeds and a very tempting price tag especially in the USA. I'm willing to bet that Silicon Power could have pushed its performance levels even higher but that would probably up the cost of the drive significantly and at least for this segment of the market that's the last thing any manufacturer wants (had this been a 512GB/1TB USB flash drive we'd naturally want to see better speeds). Overall the Marvel M70 64GB USB 3.0 flash drive lived up to our expectation and that's why it gets our Golden Award.

PROS

- Build Quality (Zinc Alloy Enclosure)
- Design
- Very Good Performance
- Lifetime Warranty
- Retractable Design
- Software Suites (SP Widget & Recuva File Recovery)
- Price Tag (USA)

CONS

- Price (EU)
- No Lanyard Included