Okay Geek Farm
Imation Defender F150 flash drive review
Jason Tsay
Cheap plastic thumb drives are all over the place and Imation decided that this just wouldn’t do. The F150 (not to be confused with the Ford truck) is a part of their Defender line of products. These storage devices are aimed at those who require high levels of security for sensitive information. Of course, great security on the software side must be matched with an equally as durable enclosure. Does the F150 fit the bill?
Features
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Waterproof and dustproof metal enclosure
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AES 256-bit Hardware Encryption
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FIPS 140-2 Level 3 Validated
- up to 64GB storage
- 5 year warranty
Our Impressions
The F150 comes in a small red cardboard box. Embedded in a chunk of foam are the flash drive and a metal lanyard loop.
The F150 is a fairly intimidating flash drive - the aluminum casing is angular and has the Imation logo boldly printed on. In terms of physical size, the F150 is considerably larger than your typical thumb drive. It’s actually about as wide as a thumb but approximately the length of a middle finger. Pulling off the sheath reveals a standard looking black flash drive. 2 tiny LEDs indicate the encryption status. A tiny red band of rubber at the base acts as a seal to keep water out while a hole is punched through the metal to loop the lanyard through. The lanyard is secured by twisting a bullet into a barrel on the lanyard. Attaching the loop is not necessary but it does allow you to safely affix the thumb drive to a keychain and whatnot.
Upon plugging in the thumb drive, the Imation software pops up as a virtual CD demanding you to create a user login. After going through the setup process, we were presented with a control panel containing several options. From the menu you can log out, view hardware/software information, “recycle” the device (restore), select a different language, or manage the user accounts on the drive. Each time you plug in the F150 and wish to access your partition of files, you must type in your password. A feature we found to be fairly neat was the read-only checkbox to prevent malware from being unknowingly written on.
Now that we’ve gone through all the special features of the F150, let’s take a look at how well it performs as a flash drive. We received the 4GB model which is more than sufficient for a couple of movies and documents but if you like to carry everything with you, Imation offers a 64GB model for $699. Say you’re looking for a basic 1GB model, you’ll be paying $59. We didn’t test the F150 in any particularly scientific method but we copied on various types of files and found the drive to write as fast as 9.35MB/s. What does this mean? It’s fast enough so that you won’t be waiting around for a file to copy.
Overall
The Imation F150 is an extremely good flash drive - it’s solid inside and out. Heck, it even passes one of the federal government’s most demanding security tests. Of course, all that protection doesn’t come cheap and you’ll find yourself paying a fine premium for the extra features. That said, if you’re requiring a high security medium of storage to tote around, the F150 is one of your best options.
Pro’s
- durable
- security options
Con’s
- a bit large
- expensive
Where to buy
This review was done by Jason Tsay, who was provided the F150 by Imation.
