Expand your Smartphone and Tablet storage capacity with Kingston MicroDUO

Storage is often a problem with devices these days and no amount seems enough. While pen drives have already been popular in the market for many years as of now, manufacturers are developing gadgets that can serve multiple purposes of storage, connectivity and data transfer and expanding your portable device storage to above average. With the new Kingston MicroDUO you can do wonders. Use it for unlimited file storage, upload data, watch movies and much more.

Kingston MicroDUO

Most android based devices like the smartphones and tablets offer a USB connector that features a USB Type A host port (the common rectangular) socket on one end and a micro-USB plug feature on the other end which enables people to connect to various devices. The USB On-the-go feature continues to remain an overlooked feature while the USB B target port continues to play its double role.

Many devices are not able to support the new USB on-the-go (OTG) and neither do they come with adapters which would enable you to connect the device. A common USB plug that is a standard size for all devices is yet to be introduced that would allow you to connect to all devices. Till then, the USB-OTG is going to continue to be overlooked and remain inconvenient.

Many manufacturers these days have come up with pen drives that feature a “wrong” type USB plug and some others which have both kinds which enable you to connect your storage device into a micro-USB port as well as a PC and other portable devices.

Design& Features

The Kingston microDUO offers similar features as the kind of pendrives mentioned above. You can use it to plug it into any PC just like you would with a regular pen drive. Once you copy the files you would want to view on your tablet or smartphone and then connect it to the device to access them remotely without the need for extra cables. It serves as a form of expandable storage even when you’re smartphone or tablet won’t allow you to have its own storage beyond a certain limit.

The Kingston microDUO comes in 3 available capacities: 8GB, 16GB and 32GB. The 64GB variant is expected to arrive into the market very soon. The 32 GB Kingston microDUO has a pretty attractive design and comes in a champagne gold body with a brown plastic cover. It definitely doesn’t look like any cheap pen drive that is found in abundance these days but rather well-crafted and stylish to use. There is a plastic shroud like cover on the micro USB plug end while the full sized USB end is left uncovered. You can even pop the plastic off if you don’t want it covering the micro-USB plug end. When the drive is plugged in, the other end sticks out sideways and swivels to an angle a little more than 90 degrees. The loop on the metal body enables you to attach a lanyard and then keep it with your key ring that would prevent you from losing the tiny gadget. The boring flimsy looking thread loop that comes with the microDUO remains mostly overlooked by buyers.

One has to be careful not to lose the micro sized Kingston microDUO which when plugged in can be pretty unobtrusive and very convenient to stash into the pocket while you’re on the go.

Ergonomics

Depending on the kind of smartphone or tablet you have, pop ups and dialogue boxes will crop up accordingly when you plug in the Kingston microDUO. Some devices show helpful instructional dialogues as to how to go about using it while some others offer options on whether to play music or videos or access files provided you have a file manager app. However in most devices, the Kingston microDUO works just like a regular micro-SD card enabling you to copy, play or save media, files and any other content. You could carry your whole music library or a bunch of movies and access it when you don’t have access to Cloud via internet and not worry about the files taking up precious inbuilt storage space which tends to slow down a device. In some cases, it can also serve as a back-up for your phone and tablet data.

When connected to a Windows machine or device, the Kingston microDUO, it works smoothly and offers a total formatted capacity of 29.2 GB. It runs on an average USB 2.0 standard speed while it lowers when multiple files of various sizes are copied to and from the microDUO. Reading speeds vary between 27.86Mbps over USB and 27.0 over micro USB. Sequential reading speed is usually 25.2 – 22 Mbps. Sequential speeds have been reported to be faster and much higher than the random speed.

Overall Verdict

Kingston microDUO is an extremely handy device to have especially when you have numerous portable gadgets that require frequent data transfers. If you’re running out of space even with an expandable storage on your tablet or smartphone, the microUSB OTG serves your purpose perfectly. It does stick out of your device a little but its size is pretty small to be overlooked when compared to the benefit it brings you. You can easily buy a cheaper prices smartphone or tablet and add a microDUO instead of paying much higher for extra storage. The market is expected to see the launch of many more such drives but for now, you have the Kingston microDUO to take advantage of. They are available at prices of Rs. 850 for 16GB and Rs. 1500 for 32 GB drives which is quite higher than standard pen drives; however you do get an edge over regular pen drives with the dual support it features.

The plug and play feature of the pen drive coupled with its mini size makes it a good choice. However, while using it you may not notice an improved performance. Users have felt that the speed is average and along with the overall performance. For perfect performance, you need to have an adapter kit or the USB OTG feature on the device.