OCZ Trifecta 2GB Secure Digital Memory Card Review

Ever had some pictures on your SD card that you wanted to show off to your friends or family, but found yourself without the cable to connect your cam to the PC and without a card reader? What about your MP3 player, you might not always need that microSD card in the side, especially if your player only uses the microSD for image storage, not for music like some DAPs on the market. OCZ has a new product called the Trifecta that has you covered on all your SD fronts. This thing can be a USB drive, microSD or a normal SD card; it’s practically the Transformer of the memory world.

Gallery

7 images

Benchmarks

Features & Specifications
I have several MP3 players laying around my office that use microSD, a few of them can’t use the microSD to expand their music capacity, but rather simply use the memory card for video and images. That’s all fine and good, but I seldom ever look at photos or watch video on the players so a micro-SD card is pretty much a waste for me. That’s one of the great things about the OCZ Trifecta. The 2GB of memory is actually on a microSD card that slips into a SD card sleeve.

This allows the microSD to be used in any camera or PDA that accepts a normal SD card. Things get better too, next time you find yourself needing to show off your paparazzi shots of Lindsay Lohan main lining chocolate cake in the bathroom and find yourself without a card reader you will be all good with the Trifecta. Simply pull the cap off the rear of the SD card holder and you have a normal USB connector allowing you to plug the Trifecta directly into your PC, giving you the ability to move files to and from the card.

Long ago, I reviewed OCZ’s Secure Digital Dual, which is a plain SD card with the removable back hiding a USB adapter. The only problem I found with that SD card was that the back fit too loosely and would come off frequently when I tried to remove the card from my camera or card reader. I am glad to say that OCZ addressed that issue with the Trifecta. OCZ notched the sides of the USB connector on the Trifecta making for a much more secure hold for the cap covering the USB connector.

The Trifecta is a 66x speed card, which is plenty fast for me to be able to take continuous shots on my Canon S2 IS camera. You can get the Trifecta in both 1GB and 2GB capacities; my review sample was the 2GB version. OCZ also gives a 5-year warranty with the drive as well. The only bad thing about the Trifecta was that Vista didn’t recognize the drive when plugged into the USB port. The Trifecta did work fine with Vista when placed in a card reader.

Benchmarks & Testing
I used Sandra XI’s Removable Storage benchmark to test the performance of the Trifecta. The Trifecta scored a combined index of 4396 operations per second and had an endurance factor of 35. In the 64MB files test the Trifecta had 9 operations/min read performance and 3 operations/min write.

I also loaded up HD Tach and gave the Trifecta a run through to get more performance data. HD Tach gave a random access time of 1.9ms and an average read speed of 10.3 MB/s.

Verdict

Conclusion

Pros

• Great flexibility in the design of the Trifecta
• Good performance

Cons

• Cap that covers USB plug easy to lose
• My Vista machines didn’t recognize the Trifecta in the USB port

Verdict
If what you are after is a convenient and handy memory card that can work in your microSD DAP, SD card camera or in your USB port as a flash drive it doesn’t get any better than the OCZ Trifecta. If you look up handy in the dictionary, a picture of the Trifecta should be beside the definition.

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