Lexar JumpDrive Retrax Review (16GB)

The Lexar JumpDrive Retrax USB thumb drive was introduced to offer an affordable, stylish, and capless thumb drive.  The USB jack can be fully retracted inside the body of the drive, protecting the connection from damage.

The Lexar JumpDrive Retrax USB thumb drive was introduced to offer an affordable, stylish, and capless thumb drive.  The USB jack can be fully retracted inside the body of the drive, protecting the connection from damage.

Our review unit is the 16GB model, which comes in a “sparkle” gray, but there are other models available.  The 2GB model is white, the 4GB model is red, the 8GB is blue, and the 32GB model is black.  All models have a 2-year limited warranty.

Design and Build

There isn’t anything fancy about this drive – it’s meant to be affordable, so you won’t find some of the higher end features (like a metal body, etc).  This drive is no-nonsense, with a plastic shell that does show some flex.  There is a lanyard attachment point at the non-business end of the drive.  To reveal the business end, the plastic thumb switch on the side can be pushed forward.  A locking mechanism keeps the USB interface extended until you slightly depress the slider and retract the metal USB jack.  A single red LED indicates drive activity.

Benchmarks

We ran the JumpDrive Retrax through our battery of benchmarks and compared it against the higher-end Lexar SAFE S3000 8GB drive and the Verbatim Tuff N Tiny 8GB drive.  As can be expected, since the Retrax is targeted at the consumer looking for an affordable drive, we didn’t see the faster transfer speeds of the higher-end SAFE S3000 model.  However, the Retrax did show a better average write latency than the other drives that we compared.

The benchmarks below show that the Retrax is around half as fast with transfers as the higher-end SAFE S3000, but the higher-end drive is also over $100, and the Retrax is around $30.

Added Features

The drive ships with a 30-day trial of the Dmailer sync software, which lets you use the drive to take your documents and emails with you.  The software syncs with Microsoft email programs (Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail), so that you can be productive wherever you insert your drive.  For more information, see www.dmailer.com.  If you inadvertently delete the copy on the drive, you can always download it again from their website.

Pros

• Affordable
• Lightweight
• Capless
• Locking mechanism (which it has) is crucial for a retractable USB drive

Cons

• Build quality is cheap – plastic is fairly flexible

Bottom Line

The Lexar JumpDrive Retrax is a no-frills USB thumbdrive.  The capless design means you won’t lose a cap, and Lexar has engineered the drive to work well with the retractable USB jack.  The jack extends easily, locks when fully extended, and retracts with a simple press and sliding motion.  Build quality is not going to put this drive anywhere near rugged, so if you’re rough with your thumb drives, a more durable product would be warranted.  Otherwise, the JumpDrive Retrax is a solid, affordable USB storage solution.

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