The ‘high-capacity, small-footprint' portable storage market continues to gather pace and Freecom's credit-card sized USB Memory is certainly slim and sleek enough to fit in a pocket or bag without weighing you down.

At just 80g it's extremely lightweight and with 120GB and 160GB capacities available there's plenty of room to carry important files around on the move. The silver, rubberised casing means that the device feels both solid in the hand and able to withstand bumps, knocks, drops and scratches. Other than a mini-USB port for the supplied cable, there are no additional controls or connections on-board.

It's predictably intended as a drag-and-drop device and comes pre-partitioned with a set of manuals, a 90-day trial of MySecurityCenter Internet Security suite and EasyLock software for encrypting content using 256bit AES CBC-mode encryption. This is fairly easy to use and a wizard guides you through the password-creation process before opening a Windows Explorer style interface onto which files can be dragged and dropped to encrypt them.

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These encrypted files cannot be viewed again unless EasyLock is opened and the password entered, so it effectively provides you with an invisible ‘vault' in which to store sensitive data. Password retries are limited to ten and at this point EasyLock will erase all encrypted files, which is a nicer approach than some rivals, who prefer to format the entire drive.

We found the software to be pretty fast and accessible and, since it could be used with other USB drives and portable storage, Freecom provides a utility to copy this, along with the manuals and other software provided, onto a local drive for safe keeping.

The USB storage is pretty quick, averaging at about 40 seconds for a gigabyte of data and, although it might have benefited from a retractable USB attachment rather than the short cable provided, there is little to criticise about the design and operation.

Freecom claims to offer superb value for money at this capacity and physical size and at £85 for the 120GB (£99 for 160GB) it's difficult to argue otherwise. If space is at a premium and these sort of capacities appeal, this is a solid if basic product that will offer plenty of peace of mind from the encryption software supplied and the rugged outer casing.

Freecom's USB Memory is a robust, slim and good value portable storage solution with effective encryption that'll keep your files safe when out and about.