Neon USB 3.0 16GB

Packaging & Contents

The Integral Neon ships in a plastic bubble wrap. On the front of the box we found claimed maximum read/write speeds of 80/10 MB/s. On the back of the box there is a table indicating windows 7, Vista and XP compatibility. Compatibility with MAC versions 8.6+, 9.0+ and OS X is stated at USB 2.0 speeds only.

Box Front

Box Back

Dimensions & Weight

The Integral Neon measures 5.4cm long, 1.8cm wide and 0.8cm high. With these dimensions there is no chance that this flash drive will obstruct adjacent ports on a computer, the drive is barely thicker than the USB port its self. This flash drive weighs 7 grams making it both extremely light and small.

Build Quality

The Integral Neon is reasonably well constructed. The entire body is made of bright orange plastic and has a hole at one end where a keychain can be attached. The plastic around the keychain hole is thin putting the drive at risk of loss should you choose to attach it to a keyring. The cap does not feel as secure as we would like and as with all flash drive caps there is also a high risk of loss. Inside there is a small red LED light which is clearly visible when the drive is in operation.

Front

Back

Test System

CrystalDiskMark Speed Test^[FAQ]

CrystalDiskMark is a free disk benchmarking utility that is very simple to use. It takes eight measurements: the read and write speeds in megabytes per second (MBps) for sequential, 512KB, random 4KB and 4KB parallel disk operations. There are more screenshots from this benchmark posted on the web than any other, probably due to its clean and simple display. There is further information, including instructions on how to benchmark your own drives, on the CrystalDiskMark wiki page.

CrystalDiskMark Score

The Integral Neon scored 75/11 MB/s in the sequential read/write tests. This is an almost reasonable headline sequential read score but an abysmal sequential write score. The Neon also just about holds its own at reading in the 512K and 4K tests but has very poor all round write performance. This type of asymmetrical read/write performance will only work out for the small minority of users whose usage patterns are highly read orientated, and even then it's not very impressive.

CrystalDiskMark Benchmark Speed Test

ATTO Disk Benchmark^[FAQ]

The Atto Disk Benchmark has probably been around for longer than any other disk benchmarking software, and you can tell from its dated interface! The utility was designed to measure regular disk drive performance but it's more than up to the task of measuring both USB flash drive and SSD speeds as well. The utility measures disk performance rates for various sizes of file and displays the results in a bar chart showing read and write speeds at each file size. The results are displayed in megabytes per second (MBps). There is further information, including instructions on how to benchmark your own drive, on the Atto wiki page.

ATTO Benchmark Speed Test

ATTO Score

The ATTO results for the Integral Neon are in line with its CrystalDiskMark scores and at 75/10 MB/s come in just below Integral's claimed read/write speeds of 80/10 MB/s.

AS SSD Real World Copy Speed^[FAQ]

The AS SSD benchmarking program was recently developed specifically for benchmarking SSD's. The utility is able to take several measurements that are well suited to solid state drives. One of the tests, ISO copy, is also relevant to slower storage devices including flash drives. The ISO copy test places two large 500MB files in a folder on the drive and then times how long it takes to copy the folder to another location on the same drive. The result is reported in both MBps and time taken. It's a real-world test that gauges a drives ability to read and write at the same time. Drives that have a good balance between their read and write speed fare relatively well on this test. There is further information, including instructions on how to use it to benchmark your own drive, on the AS SSD wiki page.

Real World Copy Speed Score

This test shows that the Integral Neon would take 121.69 seconds to create a copy of a large 1GB video file, one of the slowest real world copy speeds we have seen to date. Generally flash drives complete this test at roughly half their sequential write rates. The Neon outperformed expectations but that's only because our expectations were exceptionally low and as such this drive should be avoided for use in situations that require both reading and writing at the same time e.g. running applications or an operating system.

AS-SSD Copy Benchmark Speed Test

Conclusion

The Integral Neon is a cheap but not so cheerful drive. On the face of it the drive has an almost reasonable sequential read speed but it's still below average for a USB 3.0 flash drive. There is asymmetry in the performance profile which strongly favours reading over writing and the absolute speeds are all below average (512K, 4K etc.). The Intergral is very bright orange so it may be easier to find in a rucksack than a regular color drive but unfortunately that's about the only positive thing we can think of about this drive. Finally it's worth noting that compatibility with MAC versions 8.6+, 9.0+ and OS X is stated at USB 2.0 speeds only.

USBFlashPro
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Original Review by:  
Updated 11 years ago.