TECHWEEK
It has been almost 26 years since the first Apple iMac saw the light of day, giving the USB standard a major boost. The flat ‘turn it three times and it’s in properly’ plug is still ubiquitous, but USB-C is steadily advancing. With the availability of affordable USB sticks, the need for USB-A on laptops is at least decreasing somewhat, although there remain plenty of applications for such a ‘legacy’ connection. The Philips Click USB-C sticks work not only with laptops, but also with smartphones and tablets. Given the increasing number of models without a memory card slot, this could be a solution.
Philips Click: from 32 to 512 gigabytes
The Philips Click sticks are available with a capacity of 32 to 512 gigabytes. They are not very subtle in size, but it is useful that the plug can disappear into the stick as desired. It is also nice that each storage capacity has its own color in the print. Moreover, the print clearly indicates how much space the stick offers. These are all things that not every memory stick offers.
All versions offer read speeds of 80 to 120 megabytes per second. This concerns so-called sequential speeds; If you have to read numerous small files spread across the stick, the speed will be lower. Writing also occurs at a slower speed, which depends on the capacity. For the smallest version this is 30 to 50 megabytes per second, for the largest it should be 50 to 100 MB/s. These are quite large margins, it is not clear why the supplier cannot specify the speed more accurately. It is possible that different parts are purchased and performance may therefore differ considerably per production batch, but that is purely speculation on our part.
The sticks are not very small – Philips calls them compact, but almost 6 cm long, 2 cm wide and almost 1 cm thick is really not compact. Weighing less than 9 grams, they won’t burden your pocket or handbag. Thanks to the USB-C plug, you can also plug them into a somewhat modern smartphone or tablet. Including the iPhone 15 and of course suitable iPads with USB-C.
Price and availability
The Philips USB-C Flash Drive Click Edition, as the little gem is called in full, is available in capacities of 32, 64, 128, 256 and 512 gigabytes. The smallest costs 11.99 euros, the largest 53.99 euros.
