I don’t think this little guy needs much of an introduction, when someone says R2-D2, we all know exactly what that person means. Today for review I have a mimobot, what’s a mimobot you say? Well it’s a really cool USB Thumbdrive, or as mimoco calls them an ‘Art Toy USB Flash Drive’. This thing is just plain cool, geeks everywhere should rejoice, mimoco combined two very geeky things, the USB Thumbdrive and Star Wars to produce a limited edition set of mimobots. The set, Series 1, includes Storm Troopers, Darth Vader, Chewbacca and of course R2-D2. So, read on my fellow geeks to check this little gadget out, I’ve got lots of pictures for you, and of course a bit of testing in this review…
Star Wars R2-D2 1Gb Mimobot USB Flash Drive
Reviewed by: Kristofer Brozio AkA Dracos
Sponsor: mimoco
Tech Specs,Features or the Basic Info:
Star Wars mimobot series 1 R2-D2 1gig mimobot
Limited Edition of 3,500
mimoco, in collaboration with Lucasfilm Ltd., proudly presents Star Wars mimobot Series 1 Designer USB Flash Drives!
Two of your favorite galaxies have collided to create four awesome Star Wars mimobot crossover characters. Each are available in 1, 2, & 4GB capacities and will come preloaded with bonus removable Star Wars mimobot content like trailers, soundbites, avatars, and wallpapers!
Series 1 of this limited edition mimobot collection includes Darth Vader, Chewbacca, Stormtrooper, and R2-D2!
Quantities are limited, order yours today!
Now available for purchase, R2-D2 is the fourth character in the Star Wars mimobot Series 1! You’ve gotta figure, if he can handle the astromech duties for an X-wing, he can handle the data storage duties for you!
-Sizes available: 1GB, 2GB, 4GB
-Hi-speed USB2.0
-Mac/Windows
-2 3/8 inches tall
About mimoco:
mimoco is a designer toy studio meets consumer electronics brand based in Boston, MA. With a mission to bring style and soul to personal tech devices and to inject interactivity into the burgeoning designer toy movement, the first fruits of our vision are the delicious and fresh mimobot designer toy USB flash drives launched in late 2005.
mimobots are little friendly data fiends! Feed the 2" monsters all your essential data (tunes, pics, presentations, docs, etc.) and transport your files in style wherever you go. mimobots lead the creative revolution in personal electronic accessories and functional designer toys – truly a marriage of art and technology!
The first mimobots, from The Cosmos & goSeries, feature nine core characters designed by contributing artist Yahid ‘Serial Killer’ Rodriguez (Mazatlan, Mexico). 2006 begins the Artist Series, an ongoing collaboration delivering only the crispest characters created by a selection of influential artists representing a cross-section of pop art genres.
Our crack product design team created the mimobot’s sculptural form with portability and usability as a number one priority. As a new media platform, mimobots’ onboard flash memory comes preloaded with bonus removable content such as animation, games, and music.
mimobots are available in 512MB, 1GB, 2GB, and 4GB capacities, produced in limited editions of 250 to 3,500 units, are hi-speed USB 2.0, compatible with both Windows and Mac, and include Windows Vista’s ReadyBoost technology.
Find more Star Wars collectibles at ShopZilla!
A Better Look at Things
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I’ve got tons of pictures for you to check out, every angle of this cool little gadget, but of course as usual the first thing we check out is the packaging. Mimoco shipped R2-D2 to me via UPS in a heavy duty cardboard tube.
Opening it up, the first thing I saw was red tissue paper, I was thinking ‘hmm, what’s this about?’
Once I got everything unpacked I found mimoco included some other cool stuff as well.
They included a postcard type advertisement, the front side features the Star Wars mimobots, while the back side features a bit more about them and a personal note to me from mimoco.
mimoco also included three mimobot stickers, two Star Wars ones and one from the ‘One Love’ series.
Find more Star Wars collectibles at ShopZilla!
A Better Look at Things
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Back to that red tissue paper…
Unwrapping the red tissue paper I found a clear plastic cylinder with the Star Wars R2-D2 mimbot inside of it. I honestly wasn’t expecting much in the way of packaging, but mimoco did an excellent job with the presentation of the Star Wars mimobots, the container itself is actually pretty cool.
On the top of the package is also a hand written number to let me know which I got, I received number 667 of 3500. The Star Wars mimobots are only produced in a limited number, so they are sure to be collectors items.
The package has a technological look and feel to it, with what look like circuits around it. You can see R2-D2 right through the container, and they made it so he is sort of hovering in there.
Looking at the bottom of the container we can see some more little papers in there, which when unpacked I found to be another little advertisement for the Star Wars mimobots and a brief instruction and car sheet for the mimobot.
I hadn’t noticed it at first, but when I opened the top of the container I found this little fuzzy thing, well it turns out that mimoco also included on of their Protohoodies. A Protohoodie is (from the mimoco site): You begged for a mimobot keychain attachment and now we bring you the Original Protohoodie Keychain Accessory! Not only will it bind you and your favorite mimobot ever closer, but this soft and furry hoodie-suit will also protect your mimobot from harsh Earth elements. Now available in black, silver, red, pink, and blue!!
R2-D2 volunteered to help me hold up the Protohoodie so I could photograph it for you, you can see him hiding back there…
Find more Star Wars collectibles at ShopZilla!
A Better Look at Things
Continued:
Well here he is, R2-D2, the mimobot, cute isn’t he?
The detail that went into creating R2-D2 is very good, yes it does sort of remind me of a caricature, but that’s a big part of the mimobots charm.
The entire R2-D2 mimobot is painted all the way around, with all the details from R2-D2. You can’t mistake this USB Thumbdrive for anything but R2-D2.
On the back of R2-D2, on the bottom, between his ‘legs’ is an LED indicator that lights up blue when powered on and blinks for activity.
Here’s a couple more shots from the other side:
Find more Star Wars collectibles at ShopZilla!
A Better Look at Things
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Where’s the USB connection you might be wondering? Well R2’s dome comes off to reveal it, so basically when in use R2’s head can sit on your desk…..
The cap is on their tight by the way, there’s no way it can accidentally fall off like other USB flash drives, I was very surprised by just how tight it was to get off, but that is a good thing actually…
On the bottom of R2-D2 we can see the copyright information label and the rest of the LED indicator.
Here’s a close up of R2 for you to check out the details and excellent work that went into producing him:
And here is R2 inside the Protohoodie, now he kinda looks like an R2-D2 Teddy Bear, very cute…
Find more Star Wars collectibles at ShopZilla!
Installation, Testing and Comparison
For installation of the Star Wars R2-D2 mimobot, it’s just like any other USB flash drive, just plug it in and go. The blue LED is very bright, and I think the blue color matches R2 perfectly.
If you paid attention to the ‘Specs’ section in the beginning of the review you’d know that mimoco also included some stuff pre-loaded onto R2-D2. I’ll tell you what’s there, but not show you, I don’t want to spoil it…
When you plug R2-D2 into your USB port, up pops the usual window, on it you’ll find two files, a test file with some instructions and a Zipped file with the bonus content.
Unzipping the file you’ll find a bunch of folders, a Flash Player and a Windows Installer Package.
Included in the folder are Star Wars and mimobot related avatars, icons and wallpapers. The wallpapers are very cool, they features the Star Wars mimobots ‘photoshopped’ into actual Star Wars movie scenes, and not just R2-D2, all of the Star Wars mimobots are included. Mimoco included different resolutions as well so there is one to fit everyones screen size.
{amazon id=’B000GKTOLA’ align=’RIGHT’}
The Windows Installer package is actually a soundbite program to use only with your R2-D2 mimobot, after installing it runs silently in the background, but when you plug or unplug R2 an R2-D2 related sound is played, like his little beep-beep-beeps so familiar from the movies.
One of the things I found really cool was the Flash Player, it included all the original Teaser Trailers and Full Length movie trailers from all the Star Wars movies. I loaded up the trailer for Episode IV, and was just blown away, I totally forgot how cheesy it was, but it’s still cool though…
The Flash Player also allows you to preview the icons and wallpapers and gives you the instructions for installing the Soundbyte program.
Well that’s enough of that, let’s see what this thing can do compared to a couple other flash drives I have on hand. I’m comparing the R2-D2 mimobot to my ATP Tough Drive and Swissbit Cirrus White flash drives.
First up for testing is HdTach RW from SimpliSoftware. Lower scores are better for Random Access, and Higher scores are better for Sequential Read, Burst Speed, Average Read and Write speeds.
Overall the mimobot didn’t fair to well, but it’s not really advertised as a speed demon flash drive either, so this is just to give you a general idea of the overall performance. This review isn’t really of the mimobots performance as a flash drive.
Next up I went with SiSoft Sandra 2007 Removable Storage Benchmark and compared the same drives. Higher is better of course for all scores.
I think that’s the highest endurance score I have ever seen for a flash drive, endurance is approximately how long the drive will last. We can see again the mimobot isn’t the fastest flash drive on the block…
Again, I threw the benchmarks in just to give you an idea of the performance, but not really to judge the ability of the mimobot. This is one of those products that you are buying for what it is really, not what it can do. I can say though that, benchmarks aside, the transferring of files back and forth ‘felt’ about the same as the other drives I tested, so it’s not a slow flash drive by no means, please don’t think it is.
Find more Star Wars collectibles at ShopZilla!
Summary:
What more can I say? It’s Star Wars, it’s R2-D2, it’s a flash drive! You know you want one! Seriously though, the Star Wars R2-D2 mimobot is very well made, and you can see it was made with care and with lots of attention to details. Although I’m not sure if I want to pack it back up and save it as a collectible, or actually use it for daily use, it’s just so cool, I’d be afraid to scratch the paint off it or something. Then again I did get the Prothoodie with it for protection so we shall see…
DragonSteelMods gives the 5 out of 5 and our Editor’s Choice Award as well!
Pros:
-It’s R2-D2
-It’s Star Wars
-It’s Cool
Cons:
-Kinda slow compared to others (but who cares, it’s R2-D2!)
DIGG IT!I would like to thank mimoco for the chance to review the R2-D2 mimobot and for their support of DSM.