What’s The Most Popular Storage Capacity for Promotional USB Memory Sticks?

Branded USB Memory sticks are becoming evermore popular for the transfer and storage of large amounts of data. This popularity is mainly due to their compact size, ease of use and the dramatic reduction in price over the past few years.

One of the key decisions to make when purchasing Branded USB Memory sticks in the storage capacity.

Before delving into which capacity to select a short technical overview as is useful to understand the measurement terminology used when defining memory capacity.

Electronic data is measured in ‘bytes’. Multiples of these are:

•      1 Kilobyte (KB) is equal to 1,024 bytes

•      1 Megabyte (MB) is equal to 1,024 Kilobytes (1,048,576 bytes)

•      1 Gigabyte (GB) is equal to 1,024 Megabytes (1,073,741,824 bytes)

Branded USB Memory sticks range from 32MB to 16GB. They double up in size from 32MB:

•      32MB (almost obsolete)
•      64MB
•      128MB
•      256MB
•      512MB
•      1GB
•      2GB
•      4GB
•      8GB
•      16GB

You need to be aware that all Promotional USB Memory sticks need a small amount of capacity to allow it them work. As a general rule of thumb around 5% of the storage capacity will be used by the Memory Stick to manage how it stores the data on the stick.

So, how much data can each stick hold? The amount of data that can be stored depends on the type of the data, such as MP3 audio files, digital photos, word files etc. and the quality for example the resolution of photos.  As a benchmark 512MB memory stick would typically store about 250 photos.

When deciding what capacity to select for your Branded USB Memory sticks you need to consider the following.

• What is the objective of your Promotional USB Memory stick campaign. If it is to provide specific data or information that is pre-loaded, then the size should match the amount of data to be loaded. If the requirement is to allow the user to use the Memory stick as a promotional keepsake, then there needs to be sufficient headroom over and above any data that you may wish to load.

• What budget do you have? The higher the capacity the higher the price. However, the price differential between a 64MB and 1GB is no longer that great.

• The market for flash memory is volatile and is driven by supply and demand. Therefore, it is worth checking if there are any special offers on different USB Memory capacity. For example it has been know for 512MB to be cheaper than 256MB.

• If the Branded USB Memory sticks are gifts for prospects or existing key clients, you need to consider the perceived value of the item you are giving. So if budget is limited it may be prudent to buy less of higher capacity Branded USB Memory sticks.

Based on the above criteria, currently the most popular capacity for Branded USB Memory sticks is 1GB, but watch this space!