On Our Desk - 10

OCZ 4GB ATV Turbo

Manufacturer: OCZ
UK Price (as reviewed): £59.51 (inc. Delivery)
US Price (as reviewed): TBC

The OCZ ATV Turbo came from Richard's desk and is the most blinged up USB key in this round-up, with a bright yellow rubber shell and matching packaging. The box itself claims that the rubber housing is water, debris and shock resistant and that the key itself is a “ruggedized storage solution”.

To us, it looks more like a chav on a chain or, at best, the type of USB key that a geeky chav might use if they existed and didn’t spend all their time stealing.

The rubber case itself feels very sturdy and slightly thicker than on the Voyager, though out of the packet the rubber also felt slightly greasy and slippery. The black chevrons on the side protrude from the surface by a few millimetres though, which helps give the ATV a certain amount of grip.

The chain is the weakest spot of the ATV and actually broke once before we even got it in a machine for the first time. It’s just one of those little ball-chains though, the type used on hotel-room sinks worldwide, so it wasn’t hard to tighten up the clasp a little and solve the problem.


The only other remarkable thing about the ATV is what’s on the other end of the chain – a little rubber stopped which is supposed to be used for storing the cap of the USB key when it’s in use. I don’t know about you, but when I use a USB stick I typically just throw the lid on the desk and grab it afterwards. I suppose if you forgot to grab it then the stopper would save you some effort – as long as you didn’t forget to use it.

So – to the testing!

We used the same set of files as before and again measured the speeds. The results were identical practically, taking 52.5 seconds to write to the drive and 54 seconds to read from - hardly a noticeable difference. Using HDTach again to gauge the speed of the drive revealed that the ATV was faster though, by 0.1 MB/s, making us think that the slightly longer speed was more an issue of reaction time than USB speed. After all, all our results will be limited by the hardware we used.

When it came time to batter the USB key around a bit, we went outside again and sought to show the walls of our office exactly what we think of it. The ATV survived the test intact entirely, though the chain we thought we had fixed soon flew off when the rubber encased USB key promptly bounced off the wall and flew into a nearby tree.


We ran the ATV through another spin cycle, gently praying that the suds would wash off some of the garish yellow paint so we could get the thing out in public without being too embarrassed. Then we shoved it on the window sill to dry for a few hours.

When we came back the outside of the ATV was dry, but there was still water trapped underneath the lid – nothing a quick wipe on my swanky Hawaiian shirt wouldn’t fix, but something that could cause a problem possibly if it were trapped under there for a long time and got into the circuits. I’m amazed that nobody has yet added a small drainage hole in the lid of a USB key yet.

All in all the OCZ is an excellent little USB key and the results show that the rubber casing is more than up to the job. The packaging boasts the ability to reach read speeds of 33.35MB/s and these were speeds which we came close to reaching. At a price of £50, the ATV is an excellent choice of key for someone who needs a USB drive with just a little more than the usual amount of bling.

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• 9/10

• Performance
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• 8/10

• Value
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• 8/10

• Overall
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• 8/10

What do these scores mean?