Kingston DataTraveler microDuo Review

Ah flash drives, the surprising critters we rarely see nowadays in use – thanks partly to the advent and proliferation of cloud storage and many other different things. Ten years ago, it was one sought out, crucial item that not only appealed to hardcore tech junkies, but to the mainstream folks as well. Even though their prominence today isn’t what it used to be in the past, it’s seeing itself being reincarnated to something else more useful for the times. Enter the Kingston DataTraveler microDuo, a USB flash drive for both your computer and Android smartphone.

Today’s modern smartphones are usually stuffed with 16GB of internal storage, but as we all know too well, high definition videos and other multimedia centric files can whittle away at the total. That’s where the Kingston DataTraveler microDuo comes to the rescue, seeing that it’s a pint-sized thing that can come in handy when we’re in a pinch for space. Of course, it looks like any ordinary flash drive, but it’s significantly smaller and more compact in size – small enough to even be carried along on our key chain inconspicuously.

On one end, we have its full-sized USB connection, which allows it to act like your typical flash drive when it’s connected to a computer. Meanwhile, the other end has a plastic cover protecting the unit’s microUSB connection. Actually, it’s meant to connect to the microUSB port of an Android 4.0+ device that has USB OTG support. Once it’s connected, the Kingston DataTraveler microDuo is seen by our device as external storage – where we can use a file manager app to swap/copy data.

We know what you’re thinking. You’re probably wondering if it can charge a smartphone as well. However, if you connect it to a computer, while also being simultaneously connected to a device, it won’t charge the device – so that’s a no. Indeed, there’s a fair amount of usefulness with this accessory, but our one major complaint is that it resorts to using a USB 2.0 connection. Naturally, it would’ve been nice to see it bumped up to USB 3.0 for faster data transfers, but for those of us just using it to copy small files, it should suffice.

Kingston has the DataTraveler microDuo in 8GB, 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB capacities, which retail for $9, $14, $25, and $60 respectively through Kingston’s web site. From the looks of it, all of them except for the 64GB version are reasonably priced – albeit, for the same price, you can probably snag higher capacity flash drives. Like we said at the beginning, it’s not a must-have item, but rather, it’s something that can come in handy if you’re in the pinch and want to physically transfer something from your smartphone – or vice versa.