LaCie iamaKey: Taking the USB Key Concept Literally

Posted on November 23rd, 2009. Written by Rico.

Most likely because USB thumb drives are a dime-a-dozen nowadays, LaCie attempts to stand out with a new design imprint, releasing flash drives that are definitely different. The LaCie iamaKey is one of them.

Name	iamaKey
Brand	LaCie
Type	USB Flash Drive
Price	P1,650

The LaCie iamaKey literally is a key, right down to its ability to hook on your typical keyring. However, instead of lock-undoing serrations, the end of this key is functional flash drive that plugs into USB 2.0 ports.

Definitely unique in appearance, but performance-wise, not so. Like any other 4GB flash drive, it takes around half-an-hour to completely fill up the 4GB LaCie iamaKey—a limitation of the speed of my netbook’s hard disk (5400 rpm) and the USB 2.0 standard. Reading data on the iamaKey proved around three times as fast though, again a normal characteristic of USB flash drives.

To keep the drive contacts from getting scratched, the iamaKey comes with a plastic cover that snaps over the key head. I know the whole point of the design was to retain the clean seamless look of a key, but it would’ve been better to integrate the cover into the drive itself somehow, and not make it a separate, small transparent cover easily lost by absent-minded people.

Available in capacities ranging from 4GB to 32GB, the LaCie iamaKey should be available at your nearest consumer electronics retailer (I saw one at Anson’s Glorietta 4 last week). While I wait LaCie’s PR to get back to me on the SRPs, I can already tell you that the iamaKey is definitely all about aesthetics. Whatever price you pay for this flash drive will be for its unique appearance, not the read/write performance that’s decidedly average.