In our recent unboxing of the KE-91 external pocketable hard drive, we've again learned how fast things move in the industry of electronics and computers. Survival, growth and success means innovating, moving, or changing one's product lines here, and in pursuit of that, we have the first external hard drive product from Kingmax. Will this mean a new era of success for the brand? Their product will tell us how serious they are about these new directions they are undertaking.
The Kingmax KE-91 Portable External HDD
Design & Highlights: An Exec's Taste
We're not too crazy about boxy designs when it comes to our USB hard drives, but if done right, the effect would still be appealing to the eye. The Kingmax KE-91 is just that. It looks simply like any other portable USB hard drive, but makes use of design and good materials to attract one's attention. It uses minimal softened curves for its corners and edges, save for the edges where the metallic body encases the KE-91. The metallic jacket, so to speak, is one of the things we find to be quite attractive with this product. The texture and appearance seems to be that of quality Teflon kitchenware material. It's lustrous yet not glossy, and smudges don't stick to it. The sides are of black glossy plastic, and in our experience, while getting fingerprints on this part may not be entirely avoidable, the material is at least easy to clean, and hint scratches are only made. The USB 2.0 interface is located on the edge of one side of the KE-91, which is another interesting design choice, and we'll see why later.
There is a blue status light indicator on the unit, and it's situated on the top profile close to the USB 2.0 port. We found the USB port to be a very tight fit as if locking the cable's end once connected, so one will have to be careful with disconnecting the two. There is a fairly large warranty sticker on side of the product. This may be a put off for some who like seeing and feeling more of their product than warranty stickers. At least it's been well and cleanly installed.
Usability: Extended Features via Software
The KE-91 follows the form factor of numerous 2.5-inch external hard drives out there – it's small enough to be carried around with ease and fashionable enough to be touted around. The bundled leatherette case is also a nice touch, and a tight fit for the KE-91. It's also designed to add a little flair to the product, and also allow the user to access the USB port of the drive without having to remove it from the case. The tight USB interface on the drive isn't exactly our preference, but it could work for some users. Pulling the connector head out may require some care.
Aside from the obvious noted above, there are a couple of tools pre-installed that makes this drive more useful: PC CloneEX Lite, SecureDriveEX2, and TurboHDD USB, all from Taiwanese software R&D developer Fnet. The KE-91 includes registered versions of the TurboHDD USB and SecureDriveEX2. PC CloneEX Lite is a software that takes care of backing up your personal data for you. It can backup selectively or the entire drive, including the Windows and Program Files directories. What's special about this program is that it allows you to restore your system by booting directly from the USB storage drive that PC CloneEX Lite works with and can immediately perform recovery – especially useful when your PC's Windows installation somehow screws up.
TurboHDD USB is yet another very useful application that quite literally boosts your file transfers between other devices and the Kingmax KE-91 USB hard drive. It looks like it's designed to only work with the KE-91 and the program needs to run in the background, set to Turbo mode before users can see immediate effect in transfer speeds. We'll touch on the performance of this drive with and without this in the next section.
Performance: Boosted by TurboHDD USB
In terms of speed, expect typical performance similar to other branded USB 2.0 devices. The KE-91 we have here uses a 2.5-inch hard drive by TOSHIBA with the model MK3265GSX, which according to Toshiba, is a 5400RPM drive with SATA 3.0Gbps interface and 8MB cache. Transferring extremely files nets us about an average of 28MB/s actual transfer rate according to Windows 7, excluding the USB overhead. However, we got huge gains when we used the specially bundled TurboHDD USB software. Transfer burst speed went up to 50MB/s and averaged out between 40 to 44MB/s, and that's excluding the minimized USB overhead. The added performance is impressive and quite useful while we wait out USB 3.0 to become the new de facto standard. We've subjected the KE-91 to several hard drive tests with and without the TurboHDD software to see how it fares:
| HyperGear Bench | |
|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Core i5-750 2.66GHz |
| Cooler | Standard |
| Motherboard | Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3P |
| Memory | G.Skill Trident 2x 2GB 2000MHz @ 1333MHz |
| Graphics | Zotac GeForce 8800GTS |
| Hard Drive | Samsung Spinpoint 1TB (32MB Cache) |
| Optical Drive | LG GH20LS10 Super Multi Drive |
| Power Supply | Cougar CM Power 700W |
ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46
ATTO gave us expected results, though a little slower than what Windows 7 has reported. Hard drive performance is obviously bottlenecked by the USB 2.0 interface. Without TurboHDD USB, the drive performs up to about 24MB/s read and write operations, and up to 35MB/s with it enabled.
CrystalDiskMark 2.2
CrystalDiskMark shows us read and write results consistent with what ATTO benchmark tells us. The drive can do up to about 24 to 25MB/s in read and write performance without TurboHDD USB, and about 35MB/s with the utility enabled.
PCMark Vantage 1.0.2 x64
PCMark Vantage's HDD Suite gave the the KE-91 a score a little over 2000 points. If you notice the difference between the two tests – one with and without TurboHDD USB, you'd notice that the drive was able to perform better without the software acceleration utility, but only marginally so. The benefits of TurboHDD USB outweigh the very minimal performance hit that this suite shows, but if you're concerned about it, TurboHDD can be set to normal speed while you're not doing large file transfers with the KE-91.
Cost: Up to Par Pricing
With a price of about US $80 for a 320GB Kingmax KE-91 in the Internet and PhP 3,180 (or PhP 4,180 for the 500GB model) at CD-R King, this drive looks competitively priced against its competitors. In this already mature market, there's only so much manufacturers and marketers can do to make their product stand out. We can say however, that Kingmax's first attempt into external storage products is a step forward and in the right direction. We've pointed out the pros and cons about this product, and given that, we believe they've managed to get the KE-91 up to par with its competitors, including its price and value added softwares bundles.
| Kingmax KE-91 Specifications | |
|---|---|
| Capacity | 320GB / 500GB |
| Interface | SATA (HDD) / USB 2.0 via mini USB |
| Compatibility | Microsoft Windows 2000 / XP / Vista / Mac OS 9.x and 10.x or higher(FAT32 format only) / Linux 2.4 or higher (FAT32 format only) |
| Bundled Software | SecureDrive EX2 / PCClone Ex lite / TurboHDD USB |
| Colors | Red / Gray / Black |
| Dimensions / Weight | 114 x 75 x 12 mm / 170g |
