Iomega eGo Ruby Red PS

Iomega’s eGo brand is a neat pun, combining a sense of mobility with an attention-seeking attitude. It’s a risky recipe, though: in the past, other manufacturers’ attempts to produce drives that stand out from the crowd have spawned some truly horrific designs.

Thankfully, Iomega's eGo drives have generally managed to pull off the balancing act with impeccable taste, originally with the old “hip flask” design, and now with a new sculpted tablet format. Our red review model has a gorgeous lustre that photography struggles to convey, and we’re sure the blue and silver variants are just as sumptuous. It’s comparatively tough, too: Iomega claims it will survive a drop of up to 51in.

Although the eGo’s exterior has been revamped, technically the only thing that’s changed is the range of capacities offered. The interface is as simple as that of its predecessor, consisting of a sole mini-USB connector at the back, next to which hides a small blue activity light – not the most convenient place for a display, but then many portable drives don’t have one at all. If you need extra power, you can double the juice supplied from your PC with the provided twin USB connector cable.

In our tests, the eGo proved not only a sharp design but a snappy performer. It wrote our 3GB file in 1min 46secs, and read our 3,000 files in a blazing 12.1 seconds — great times for a portable drive. Its only weakness was in writing the 3,000 files in the first place: here, its time of 22.3 seconds was around three seconds slower than other drives we’ve seen.

It still adds up to a very creditable performance, and for a portable drive the price isn’t bad either – when the eGo brand was introduced it was an expensive luxury, but today the 500GB model costs only £10 more than its rivals. And you’re not paying for looks alone: the Iomega Protection Suite, alluded to in the model name, is a versatile package, offering multiple backup clients to suit differing needs (evidently a perk of Iomega’s acquisition last year by data security specialists EMC). Throw in a longer-than-average three-year warranty and you’re left with one eGo that needs no flattery.

Author: Darien Graham-Smith