Physical media... it's still a thing. We just recently got rid of all our DVDs , which we hadn't used in almost a decade, but then I was at my parents' and they still have a VCR player in the basement.
Not as old, but feels like it, are the USB 'thumb drives'. I remember going from year 1 of university with 3.5" floppy disks (having to really get good at winzip to compress files across multiples) to starting to have flash drives, or even SD cards.
We still use flash drives around the house, if not for work, but mostly for bringing media to things that aren't connected. If I want to send a friend a bunch of music sheet files, it's easy enough to send him over a link to a google drive. To display some photos on a TV... not as simple (sure I could set it up on Google Photos as an album and then cast... but then my phone is 'occupied' while it casts).
It's sometimes easier to just plop a thumb drive. And I'll admit, I don't have as many as I used to have, so when I do grab one, getting one that's more versatile will definitely be helpful.
I was sent over this option from Patianco, which comes as ~$32CAD for 256GB or ~$46CAD for 512GB, and the drawing feature here is it has a USB-A port (standard), but also as a flippable head for another.
Now, as you can see, the flippable end has a lightning connector, and they make a big to-do about that it has the right pins for proper connection and ensuring best speeds. Great if you're going to connect from an (older) iPhone to something else. But this is an Android blog... where is the USB-C? That would definitely be helpful for me. You do get a lighting - USB-C adapter in the box( and a microUSB one as well... ew... who has that still). So for me I need that kind of adapter if I want to transfer between laptop and tablet, or phone.
And ... those USB-A > USB-C adapters are there already (I've got a few kicking around in multiple bags as a 'just in case', even dock adapters for HDMI which have USB-A as well), so for me this has a redundant end, really only aimed for (older) iPad and iPhone users. So not for me. If maybe the adapters had a physical 'tether' to the drive so it wouldn't get lost at the bottom of a bag, but was always easily accessible.
It does feel nice. The construction is a solid alloy, and the swivel/hinge is rigid (some spring or with a magnet to hold it in place and doesn't just swing freely/annoyingly)
But, how does it work.
It does transfer files pretty quickly. It claimed 1GB in about 20s, and where I was 1.4GB taking 2 minutes, I wasn't getting that speed, but it's still a decent speed.
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