SANDISK HAS ANNOUNCED its latest entry to the consumer flash storage drive market.
The Sandisk Ultra Fit is a small USB 3.0flash drive designed to be "plug and stay", providing expanded storage to existing devices including laptops, games consoles, home entertainment systems and even car stereos.
The drive is about the same size as a small Bluetooth adapter, and compares to the USB 2.0 Sandisk Cruzer Fit launched last year.
Sandisk claims it is capable of transferring a movie in 40 seconds and is available in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB capacities, with the 64GB version offering transfer speeds up to 10 times faster than USB 2.0 drives, and all offer read speeds of up to 130MBps.
Included with the Ultra Fit drive is Sandisk Secureaccess encryption software which protects files with 128-bit protection, and a year's subscription to Sandisk Rescuepro to recover lost or corrupted data.
"As a leader in the flash storage space, our goal has always been to deliver the best, most reliable products," said Sandisk director of product marketing Philippe Williams.
"While there are other USB 3.0 products on the market, SanDisk's Ultra Fit USB 3.0 Flash Drive offers consumers superior performance and impressive capacity in an extremely compact design."
Prices are yet to be announced, but a quick perusal of a popular shopping website (a river runs through it) shows the 16GB at £14.00, with the 32GB at £22.80 and the 64GB at £51.50.
Sandisk has had a busy year already, having announced the Sandisk Extreme Pro SDHC/SDXC UHS-II Card - the first U3 card, a new classification for 4K video - and a 128GB version of its Sandisk Ultra Micro SDXC card - the first to break the 128GB barrier.