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It is 7x6.5x1.5cm and weighs 66grams. It has a hard wired 20cm USB C lead emerging from the back.
The front of the unit has Compact Flash on the top and SD and Micro SD under it.
Before you say everything is SD or Micro SD these days – and you are probably correct – there are still some top of the range cameras that have Compact Flash alongside SD to capture images and videos.
The StarTech motto is ‘Hard-to-find made easy’ and although I have a range of cards to fit this device my Compact Flash offerings are a few years old and are therefore tiny by today’s capacities.
Anyone needing to transfer images and videos when away from a PC could well have a use for such a device as you plug it in to most recent SmartPhones and transfer the data to the phone or even directly via Wi-Fi or mobile data streams to somewhere else.
Yes some recent cameras have Wi-Fi ability but that either risks a public network or needs to link via mobile data as a two part exercise.
This card just needs your phone to support OTG (on the go) devices and your external card is connected.
A lot of recent phones also have quality cameras built in and if taking a large video being able to offload this quickly can be just as important so USB3 comes into play with its faster transfer speed.
In my tests this unit transferred data both ways quickly and without problem.
In theory with the right conditions 5Gbps transfer is possible. Anyone who has fiddled to remove a micro SD card from a phone in a public place has uttered a range of expletives, especially when they try to reinsert a new card and in most cases this will also involve rebooting the phone.
A lot of recent Tablets, Tablet/Notebooks also use USB C so it’s not only phones that can benefit.
Now a little about the original card reader that I am sure will be useful for those who have CFast 2.0 Cards, it is 6x4x1.5cm and weighs 42 grams it comes with a hard wired 20cm USB3 emerging from the back. The front has the CFast 2.0 socket on the front with green LED beside it.
While I cannot tell you about the speed of transfer of this unit although their website claims the same 5Gbps as the above unit I can say the build quality looks good and the USB lead is that quality of matt rubber in the lead. Both units come with clear documentation in English.
Further details on all www.StarTech.Com devices are available on their website.
The USB 3.0 Flash Memory Multi-Card Reader and Writer with USB-C is available from the link below for
£34.99.
https://www.startech.com/uk/HDD/Card-Readers/USB-Card-Readers/usb-c-card-reader~FCREADU3C
The USB3 Card Reader/Writer for CFast 2 Cards is available from the link below for £51
https://www.startech.com/uk/HDD/Card-Readers/USB-Card-Readers/cfast-card-reader~CFASTRWU3
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