LaCie iamaKey: A Review

Carrying around a flash drive has always seemed like a hassle to me.  It’s just another thing i have to put in my already crowded pockets.  The lanyards get tangled on things, the drives are small and easy to lose, etc.  There’s just a whole mess of issues with regular flash drives.  LaCie, on the other hand, has made the most ingenious product I’ve seen in a long time.  It’s the LaCie iamaKey, and it’s awesome [pictures are here].

So what makes this flash drive so special?  For starters, it’s shaped like a key!  That may not seem like an amazing thing, but trust me, it truly is!  Never again will you have to fuss with another drive or worry about losing a drive.  The LaCie iamaKey clips right onto your key ring and blends right in.  Most people will thing it is actually a key, to be honest.  I’ve had a few people ask me why I was sticking a key inside a computer’s USB port over the past week or so as I’ve started using it more and more.  Being shaped like a key, I’m not going to lie and say I was not worried about durability when I bought it.  Let me tell you that there is absolutely no need to worry about durability.  It’s the most rugged flash drive I’ve seen and used in a long time.  It matches, if not exceeds, the quality and durability of the Sandisk Cruzer Micro Titanium drives.  The last concern people always have with flash drives is speed.  This drive is super speedy!  I copied the Mac OS X 10.5.6 Combo Update (around 700 megabytes) to the drive in around 30-40 seconds or so.  Copying it back onto a machine took only roughly 20 seconds.  It impressed me for sure.

Overall, this drive is great.  If you’re looking for a nice, durable, convenient flash drive, then this is definitely for you.  LaCie sells two models of the iamaKey, a 4GB version, and an 8GB version.  For a few dollars cheaper on each, respectively, LaCie sells the slightly larger, less rugged itsaKey.