Remember what was important for back-to-school supplies when we were kids? A ruler, pencils, pens, notebooks, a cool pencil case, and eventually a calculator. Well, you may notice that your kid’s school now added a flash drive to the list. So, with all these different flash drives on the market, how does a parent choose?
Your biggest concern most likely is finding the perfect flash drive that your kids won’t lose. First, let’s face the facts, kids lose things. Which means you can forget about that $50 SanDisk extreme till they’re in college! You may initially think that a flash drive with a key ring is the solution. While the key loop may be convenient for adults, depending on your kid’s age (and personality) that may not be the best solution. Even if your child is at an age where they carry keys, the only thing this will change is that their keys will also get lost in the process!
Though you know that you shouldn’t invest in a $50 USB drive that doesn’t mean you should go for any random $5 to $10 ones you find at your local pharmacy either. The issue with flash drives is that they are not all equally reliable. Losing data is just as bad as losing the drive itself! Once the flash drive proves to be unreliable, you’ll need to replace it just the same as if it were lost or stolen.
The solution to your child keeping their flash drive safe is to make it look fun! We all know that our little ones aren’t going to go crazy for the actual USB inside the drive. So the outside of the drive should be something they love, and that they will be excited to use. If their new flash drive becomes one of their favorite things then you know you found the right one!
Recently, we stumbled across a company that makes custom flash drives. They have been in the industry for over a decade and make flash drives into any shape or material! The issue was to get our own customized drives, we’d have to order 100, and no kid loses things that often. After talking to them, they pointed us to their store where they sell flash drives individually and came across these cute little emoji flash drives!
Our kids can’t get enough of emoji products, and if it were up to them, they would ban the English language and only communicate using emojis. The flash drive manufacturers, USB Memory Direct, have three different emoji drives: the poop, heart eyes, and crying laughing face emojis. While physically they look great, we wanted to make sure they fit our qualifications before purchasing some of our own.
Don’t let the price fool you, it’s not the same as those novelty flash drives in CVS. USB Memory Direct produces wholesale flash drives and backs all of their memory with a lifetime warranty. The emojis have a 3.0 flash drive that works significantly faster than the cheap pharmacy check-out isle drives. They come in 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB. This allows you to choose which capacity is best for your child by their age and requirements. Unless your children are in a magnet program for film, art, music, or computer science you likely won’t need the 64GB. For us, the 32GB was the best deal, at only a buck more than the 16GB!
What we really like about these flash drives is that they are made out of durable silicone just like many toys. We found this out when we accidentally washed an emoji and another cute drive from Amazon with our kids’ laundry. The Amazon one warped from the high heat and started cracking, but the emoji was pristine! At first, this scared us into asking them what the heck this thing is made of?! They told us that most industry standard custom shaped USBs are made of PVC rubber. Instead, they made their emojis out of the same stuff the Livestrong bracelets are made of making the flash drive easy to clean and difficult to break.
When we told them that these USBs were for our kids, their only warning was that regardless of the appearance a flash drive is not a toy. Though it survived the wash, we were lucky that it was only washed. Turns out, these chips are water resistant but any chip can easily lose its data or get destroyed by static electricity in a dryer! Remember, do not buy them a flash drive until they start school. Kids under 4 are prone to putting their toys in their mouth. Something metal and small like a flash drive could be a serious choking hazard. Luckily, once your kid is old enough to go to school they also understand that flash drives are not food.
The emoji flash drives are truly a great first flash drive for your little ones. However, make sure yours isn’t made from PVC or something else kids shouldn’t be handling. That and the lifetime warranty is why we proudly recommend USB Memory Direct flash drives. Just don’t tell them if you accidentally put it in the dryer!
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