ADATA i-Memory UE710 64GB Lightning OTG Flash Drive Review

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With nearly everyone being connected to the outside world either via a smartphone or tablet, storage has always been one of the most important things. With Apple devices, storage capacity was always something you had to pay quite a bit more to receive, but with the OTG flash drive now you can stream, transfer and store your photos and movies easier than ever before.

The latest solution from ADATA comes in the form of the UE710, a hybrid flash drive that sports an Apple Lightning connection on one end while the other sports USB 3.0 connectivity. Capacity options for this drive range from 32GB all the way up to 128GB, and there are three color variations (White, Black, and Rose Gold) that kind of fit with Apple's product color scheme.

This drive is said to support 4K video streaming, and while ADATA doesn't give out any solid marketing numbers, we will find out just what this drive is capable of soon enough. On the flip side, the i-Memory or UE710 from ADATA is certified by Apple as a MFi device, so there is some peace of mind with this solution.

MSRP for the 64GB ADATA UE710 is listed at $89.99 with a one-year warranty.

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Packaging for the UE710 houses the drive in the middle behind clear plastic. Below we have marketing information including the 4K logo and its capacity at 64GB.

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The backside offers a little more detail on the drive with specifications and OS support towards the middle while just a touch lower we have QR codes for the app needed to access this drive on iOS.

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The scope of delivery is quite simple, the drive in its black piano form comes with operating instructions.

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The side of the drive houses the slider from which you can select the Lightning or USB 3.0 connection. The top of the drive houses capacity and branding.

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Above, we have the USB 3.0 Type-A end, and as you can see, all looks good so far.

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The Lightning end of the drive is seen above.

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The app needed to install on your phone for the UE710 is the i-Memory utility.

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While many of the iOS OTG drives uses the same platform based on the Photofast platform, I was happy to see ADATA use something entirely different. As you can see above, the top of the menu shows you capacity of the drive with the rest of the menu broken down into categories.

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Seen above is the settings menu and we don't have much in here other than the software version and contact backup.

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The ADATA UE710 uses the FAT32 filesystem with 58.8GB usable after formatting.

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The performance for the UE710 wasn't too impressive as I was only able to get 22 MB/s read and 17 MB/s write out of our 64GB sample.

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With performance like that and its price well over 1$ per GB, the ADATA UE710 found a spot at the bottom of the price/performance chart.

The ADATA i-Memory or UE710 is really in a tough spot, especially when you consider the amount of Lightning flash drives on the market now. With that said, the ADATA UE710 does feature a rather decent build quality. The plastics seem to be durable enough for everyday use, and the sliding mechanism moves quite freely.

On the performance side of things, I was able to reach 22 MB/s read and 17 MB/s write, and while these numbers are quite abysmal in this day and age, it does give it enough read performance for a 4K stream - although you may be waiting awhile to load your data to the drive. In price/performance, the drive landed near the bottom, mostly due to its high price per GB, hovering around $1.41 as I write this.

On the app side of things, the ADATA UE710 does get away from the standard app that most vendors repurpose with their branding, and I do like that it's much more streamlined to navigate. Overall, the ADATA is a solid drive that lacks the high-end performance some may be looking for, but it's still a fairly decent product.

Tyler's Test System Specifications

• Motherboard: ASUS Z97-A - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
• CPU: Intel Core i7 4770K - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
• Cooler: Corsair H100i GTX - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
• Memory: Patriot Viper 3 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3 1600 - Buy from Amazon
• Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
• Storage: Intel 730 480GB - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
• Case: Corsair Obsidian 750D - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
• Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower 750W - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
• OS: Microsoft Windows 10 - Buy from Amazon