Micro Vault Mach USB 3.0 16GB

Packaging & Contents

The Sony Micro Vault ships on a flat piece of cardboard with a small plastic bubble wrap housing the drive. A speed rating of 120 MB/s is printed on the front of the packaging but it does not say whether its a read or write speed. On the Sony website the speeds are stated more clearly, this particular model (16GB) has a claimed read speed of up to 120 MB/s. The drive comes with a 5 year Sony warranty which is again clearly printed on the front of the packaging. Finally the drive comes with File Rescue and X-Pict Story software but in order to get them you have to download them from the Sony website, there is a download url given on the back of the box.

Box Front

Box Back

Dimensions & Weight

The Sony Micro Vault Mach measures 6.9cm long, 2cm wide, 1.0cm high and weighs 14 grams. The drive is reasonably compact and has broadly average dimensions.

Build Quality

The Micro Vault Mach has a loose feel to it. Contrary to the 'Metal Body' claims on the package, it's actually made of plastic. The drive has a spring loaded mechanism that works much like a spring loaded pen. It's interesting that when you remove the drive from a USB port it automatically retracts, the first time we did this it seemed a little strange but its actually a clever feature which saves you a click every time you unplug the device. There is a secure place to attach a keychain at the top of the drive. Finally there is an orange LED indicator inside the black plastic that flashes when the drive is actively in use.

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 Micro Vault Mach scored 130/24 MB/s in the sequential read/write tests. This is a very decent sequential read speed, but for a USB 3.0 device we really expect more than the 24 MB/s sequential write. The strongest relative area of performance for this drive is its 4K read speed which clocked in at 10.1 MB/s and is amongst the higher readings we have seen. Overall the drive has a slightly above average performance.

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 Micro Vault are broadly in line with the CrystalDiskMark scores and at 125/23 MB/s come in just over Sonys claimed read speed of 120 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 Micro Vault Mach would take 18.02 seconds to create a copy of a large 1GB video file. Given that this drive only scored 24MB/s in the write test this is much higher than expected but in absolute terms still not enough to make it stand out from the rest.

AS-SSD Copy Benchmark Speed Test

Conclusion

We had high expectations for this drive, unfortunately we were slightly disappointed. On the positive side the drive has excellent sequential read speeds, but the performance profile is unbalanced and the drive is significantly weaker at writing. In terms of build quality the drive is lacking, the plastic feels loose and the drive rattles when you shake it. Overall this drive has above average performance but is also priced higher than average leaving it reasonable value for money at best, there are better deals to be had at this time.

USBFlashPro
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Original Review by:  
Updated 11 years ago.