One of the more interesting trends in the promotional USB market of recent years has been the development of a range of wafer thin USB card options. These are USB flash drives that make use of “chip on board” USB solution rather than the more conventional (and larger) PCB options where a separate flash memory module, controller chip and capacitor are all assembled onto a small PCB (Printed Circuit Board).
The “chip on board” solutions are about the size of a finger nail and consolidate the memory and controllers onto one small wafer thin component which, despite its size, is capable of supporting up to a whopping 16GB of data!
USB Flash Drive - PCB Vs Chip on Board
These much smaller “chip on board” solutions give much more scope to the product designers and have been instrumental in the availability of products like USB keys, USB paperclips and a range of ultra-thin USB cards.
The first generation of USB cards to use these smaller chip on board solutions was a 4-5mm thick credit card shaped card but more recently these have evolved into much thinner 2.5mm options and a range of different shapes (squares, circles and rectangles) are now available.
It doesn’t take too much imagination to recognise that these different shapes equate to badges, button badges, name badges, credit cards and business cards but some more creative customers have used the different shapes to represent condoms, tea bags, LP sleeves and dominos!
Wafer Thin USB Credit Cards
Used as a badge or business card they are an ideal way to get your brand noticed (visually) as well as being a really creative way of distributing information about your business, event or band! Simply pre-load all of your company marketing material, price lists, video clips, and web links onto the cards and they become a really cost effective way to distribute lots of information.
The smaller Chip on Board memory is also used in most fully customised (bespoke) products. It’s just much easier to design and construct customised 3-D shapes using these smaller solutions.
The only downside of USB flash drives that have been produced using Chip on Board memory is price – whilst not hugely more expensive they do carry a small premium so expect to pay around 10% more for any product that uses this smaller form factor. There is no compromise on quality, performance or product life.
USB Buttons and Badges
USB2U carry a wide range of USB flash drives including many that use the smaller Chip on Board solutions (including lots of card variants). Call or email for details.
Tags: chip on board, thin usb, USB badges, usb credit card, wafer, wafer usb
This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 26th, 2013 at 11:23 am and is filed under credit card flash drives, USB Badges, USB Business Cards, USB2U News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
