Dane-Elec Marvel Avengers USB Drive

Combine a detailed Marvel collectible with 8GB of storage and what do you get? A flash drive that will have you shouting "Avengers Assemble!" Dane-Elec Memory, the same company behind the Duracell Rugged USB Drive, has released a set of four 8GB flash drives, each featuring one of the Avengers: Captain America, Iron Man, The Hulk, and Thor ($14.99 list each). Although the drives don't offer fantastic performance or S.H.I.E.L.D.-level security features, they are reasonably priced, and make an eye-catching addition to the desk of any Avengers fan.

Design and Features
Each drive is constructed entirely from plastic?including the USB plug?with one Marvel hero on top and a sliding USB connector built into the base. The base of each measures 0.8 by 1.2 by 1.8 inches (HWD), with each Avenger adding between 2.4 and 3 inches more to the drives' height. As collectible figurines go, these are on par with better-looking action figures, but they lack joint articulation or moving parts. Captain America has his updated 21st-century uniform and iconic shield, Iron Man has his Mark 7 armor, Thor is in full battle dress with Mjolnir raised high, and the Hulk is in all his Mark Ruffalo?modeled green-ness. Obviously, these drives aren't as pocketable as sleeker keychain drives, and you may have trouble fitting them into recessed or cramped USB ports, but to be fair, other drives don't let you stage mock battles against Loki and Thanos on your desk at work. (I'm not the only one who does that, right?)

The drive itself is basic, with USB 2.0 connectivity and 8GB of storage space (7.2GB in actual testing). The slider mechanism is a bit stiff, but not so much as to be unusable. With FAT32 formatting, the Avengers drives are compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. Dane-Elec covers the drives with a five-year warranty.

Selling for $14.99, or $1.87 per gigabyte, the Avengers USB drives are fairly priced for USB 2.0 storage. The Verbatim Store 'n' Go Clip-it USB Drive ($22 street, 3.5 stars) sells for $1.83 per gigabyte; our Editors' Choice, the encryptedKingston DataTraveler Locker+ (8GB) ($14 street, 4 stars), sells for $1.75 per gigabyte. Premium drives with special features or stylish looks are more expensive, like the pint-size Verbatim Tuff 'n' Tiny at $4.47 per gigabyte or the Victorinox Swiss Army Slim Flight (4GB) ($40 street, 4 stars) at $10 per gigabyte. As with groceries, the best prices in storage come when you buy in bulk?the 128GB Kingston DataTraveler R500 ($200 street, 3.5 stars) costs a mere $1.56 per gigabyte.

Performance
We weren't expecting these novelty drives to provide superior performance?that's not their main selling point?but what we saw was still in line with similarly priced drives. In our timed data transfer tests, the Avengers USB drives produced speeds of 4.4MBps (write) and 16.3MBps (read). Although they're nothing to boast about, they don't lag too far behind other drives, like the Victorinox Swiss Army Slim Flight (6MBps write, 24MBps read), the Verbatim Store N' Go Clip-it (6MBps write, 15MBps read), or the Kingston DataTraveler Locker+ (9.6MBps write, 24MBps read).

Even if the Marvel Avengers USB Drives aren't super-powered, they offer affordable storage with moderate performance. For faster speeds you'd want something like the Editors' Choice Kingston DataTraveler Locker+; if you buy these drives, it won't be for their prowess transferring data. Serious collectors may not even open the packaging, preferring to keep these collectibles in mint condition. The only real disappointment we had while testing these drives was that there isn't also a companion set containing Hawkeye, Black Widow, Nick Fury, and Loki.

COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the Dane-Elec Marvel Avengers USB Drives with several other flash drives side by side.

More flash drive reviews:
??? Dane-Elec Marvel Avengers USB Drive
??? SanDisk Extreme 3.0 (64GB)
??? Duracell Rugged USB Drive (16GB)
??? Verbatim Store 'n' Go V3 USB Drive (16GB)
??? SanDisk Ultra 32GB Flash Drive
?? more

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