So it looks as though we’ve got a theme going on this week, memory, but not really, it’s just how the reviews worked out… Not long ago I took a look at the Super Talent Pico-C Gold 8gb USB Drive and I found it to be a very nice, and very small portable storage option, today we’ve got another in the Pico series of drives from Super Talent.

Today for review I’ve got the Super Talent Pico-C Nickel Plated 16gb USB drive, not only is it very small, but it performs well, is very tough and rugged and it’s rather attractive as well. I’ve put it up against several other USB drives I’ve got on hand for comparison, so read on to learn how it compared to the competition.

Super Talent has some of the nicest packaging I’ve seen really, especially for a USB drive. The package is a gold trimmed, black cardboard box that looks like it should house an expensive piece of jewelry really, but it opens in presentation style to reveal the Pico-C drive though a small window in the box.

Inside we find another box of sorts, well it’s actually two pieces, a top and bottom made of clear plastic. We find the Pico-C along with the keychain or cellphone strap in another compartment.

Here’s a closer look at the chain that’s included, it is well made, I can attest to that fact, I’ve had my Pico-C Gold for quite some time and it’s been through a lot, the chain has held up through everything.

and here’s the drive itself, it’s Nickel plated so it’s rather dark in color, it’s not the color of an actual Nickel that you might expect though. The front side has the Super Talent logo and the capacity while the back is plain. There’s no cap so the USB contact points are exposed, it’s surprisingly heavy for just how small it is really. It is basically sealed so it’s water resistant and being solid metal it’s very rugged and durable. The third picture has the Pico-C with a Quarter for size scale, so you can see it’s rather small.

Specifications:

Super Talent Pico-C Nickel Plated 16GB USB2.0 Flash Drive

Super Talent’s patented PICO USB drives pack huge capacities into a tiny case. Half the size of an SD card, each PICO drive is smaller than the plug at the end of a USB cable! But tiny does not have to mean fragile or slow.
Encased in a sleek and solid metal housing, no-compromise PICO drives are shock- and water-resistant to hold up under harsh conditions. And we didn’t forget to include zippy 200x transfer speeds. Our line of PICO USB drives have won over 70 awards to date including being featured on the cover of Popular Science magazine.

Mfr Part Number: STU16GPCN

Features:
-Weight less than 6g
-Up to 30MB/s (200X) data transfer rate
-Fully compatible with USB 2.0 and 1.1
– Durable: Shock resistant and water resistant
-Powered by USB bus – no external power is required
-Durable solid-state storage – 10 years data retention
-Hot Plug & Play – enable you to install and uninstall Pico anytime
-Supports ReadyBoost
– Driver downloads: Free password control through Super Talent’s website
– Guaranteed : Backed with Super Talent’s three year warranty
– Made in USA: Designed and Manufactured in USA

-Capless
-Nickel plating
-With Steel Ball Chain
-Capacity: 16 GB
-Interface: USB 2.0
-Dimensions: 31.3 x 12.4 x 3.4 mm

Ok, now for the real part of the review, the actual comparison part where I show you just how well it performs or doesn’t perform. I’ve put the Pico-C 16gb USB drive up against others I’ve got on hand. The drives are the OCZ Rally2 4gb, Corsair Flash Voyager mini 4gb, Sandisk Cruzer Enterprise 2gb and a Super Talent drive, as well as the PNY 16gb Attaché and the PNY 32gb Attach

First up of course is SiSoft Sandra 2009 Sp2 Removable Storage Benchmark, graph is ordered lowest to highest, higher scores are better.

We see the Pico-C bests both of the PNY drives easily, but overall it’s just an average performer according to this test, we do see though that the Pico-C comes out way ahead with a score of 60 for the Endurance Factor part of the test.

Here’s a look at the 256MB Files Test part of the Removable Storage Test, same arrangements here, lowest to highest, with higher being better. I arranged the graph using the Write Performance as the reference point for ordering.

Here we see the Pico-C moves up a spot actually, so it appears to do better. We see it has excellent Read Performance and average Write Performance.

Next test I use it DiskBench, this gives us the real time and transfer rates to do a certain task. For my testing I used a 350MB .AVI Video file and tested the times to Copy To, Copy From and Read From the USB drives. Lower times are better of course, again I used the Write or Copy To speed for the graph organization.

Here we see it takes about 30 seconds to transfer the file from my hard drive to the Pico-C, not a bad time really, about average.

Next graph is showing the actual transfer rates of the tasks, faster is better of course.

Here we see the actual transfer rates, and we can see the Pico-C writes at a little more than 11MB/s. If we go back and look at the specs it says that the Pico-C is listed as having transfer rates of up to 30MB/s, and we can see it actually goes a hair above that with 30.87MB/s Copy From speeds.

There’s one small part in the specs that I bet most people missed, it’s the part where it says "Made in USA: Designed and Manufactured in USA", to me that means something, especially when most everything else is made overseas. Just a thought really, something that I can appreciate…

The Pico-C though is a great USB drive, I like all Super Talent products, and of course I like USB drives if you hadn’t noticed. The Pico series of USB drives are all very well made, I especially like the solid build of the Pico-C drives, they quite honestly feel indestructible.

Conclusion:

The Super Talent Pico-C 16gb USB drive is one of the best made products out there today in terms of USB drives, there aren’t many out there that can compare to the quality and durability of the Pico-C.

The speeds are very good overall exceeding the rated specs by just a little bit, the write speeds though are a bit slow, but really they’ve average for most USB drives.

If you’re looking for a very small and well made USB drive then look no further than the Super Talent Pico-C, I can easily and honestly Recommend it to anyone looking for a quality USB drive that will last for quite a while.

Pros:
Small and portable
Very well made
Aesthetically pleasing
Decent speeds overall

Cons:
A bit slow with writing

Grades:
Overall
Design
Performance