OCZ's CrossOver flash drive was introduced in December last year, and back then we taught that integrating a microSDHC card reader into a flash drive is a really clever idea, and that it's a practical concept. Flash memory prices might be raising lately, but USB flash drives are still dirty cheap and have became an every day gadget that you either use for storage or quick transfer of files.

When you take into account the fact that today most mobile phones use a microSD/microSDHC card for its storage capabilities and that some of those same mobile phones come with a weird cable, the CrossOver sounds like a great thing to have in your pocket.



The CrossOver is a plain and normal USB flash drive that comes in 2, 4 and 8GB capacities. It is packed in a well built dark gray aluminium chassis, and it is pretty compact. It's not bulky as some other flash drives, but it's not very small either.


Despite the fact that this one targets the value part of the market the build quality is still high. Thankfully, OCZ decided to go with aluminium on this one, no cheap plastic to be seen here.



The card reader is well hidden on the end of the flash drive, just below the lanyard hole. The card does not slide all the way in, but it feels solid, so we doubt that you will have any problems if you consider using it as an expander for some additional storage.



OCZ targets mainstream market with this one, so practicality, value and low price are the key points for this drive. This means that transfer speeds are mainstream as well. We decided to put OCZ's CrossOver against some flash drives which we had around, and we simply included the Patriot Xporter to show the advantage of SLC based flash drive, which are much more expensive.



OCZ's CrossOver is also a card reader so we decided to include the read and write speeds of it when the microSD card is plugged in. When you plug the microSD card in, it appears as a separate removable storage drive, just as you would expect from a normal card reader.



As you can see from the HD Tune read benchmark, this is after all a value product, and we didn't expect any miracles from it. It managed to outperform Kingston's Data Traveler which is a nice result, but once again high performance flash drives like Xporter simply takes the lead.



SiSoft Sandra write test was even more surprising as OCZ manages to outperform both Kingston's DT 4GB and Kingmax's tiny Super Stick. The most interesting result is the OCZ's microSD 1GB card that was plugged into the CrossOver as, according to Sandra write test, it even has higher speeds than the CrossOver itself.

To show you the real world performance we tried copying both 1,796 various files and folders (1.35GB) and a single 700MB file.



As you can see from the results, the OCZ CrossOver fares well against some other value flash drives, but it is unable to cope with SLC based Patriot Xporter XT Plus which is, by the way, quite a bit more expensive.

Conclusion

OCZ made a good USB flash drive that can surely come in handy if you need to quickly transfer some files from your microSD card to the PC and you either do not have the cable or a card reader near by.

Unfortunately, CrossOver is just another USB flash drive in an endless sea of similar products with mediocre transfer speeds.



The good side of the story is that you get a decent value flash drive that doubles as a card reader, has a low price and might end up faster than your average cheap flash drive. The lowest price for the tested 8GB version currently stands at €17,81. On the other hand, high performance drives are usually priced at €30+.

If you need a flash drive that doubles as a card reader and which can be easily expanded with a microSD card for some additional storage, then OCZ CrossOver is made just for you.