SanDisk ImageMate 6 in 1 USB 2.0 Card Reader / Writer

Company: SanDisk
Product: ImageMate 6 in 1 Card Reader / Writer
Street Price: ~$35.00 USD
Date Reviewed: March 12, 2003
Reviewed By: Jason Rabel
Overall Rating: (9.5/10)

Taking A Look At The ImageMate 6 in 1:

When you first look at the card reader in the package, it doesn't exactly look very portable with the large base, however that becomes detachable and an extra cable is included so you can take the card reader "on the go".

In the package you get the ImageMate 6 in 1 (of course), an extra USB cable to hook up to the reader when it is detached, an instruction pamphlet, and a CD-ROM with drivers and such. Like I mentioned before, the reader detaches from the base so you can take it with you. This was the most appealing feature to me over other readers I was looking at which didn't have such a feature. The base sits on my desk and stays hooked up to my desktop machine, I usually leave the portable cable in my laptop bag so all I have to do is grab the reader and I'm good to go. Just incase you were wondering, the reader is powered from the USB port, so no extra power cable or batteries are needed.

You hook up the extra USB cable in the same port that the reader connects to the base station with, it couldn't be simpler. My only complaint is that this cable is so short! My USB ports on my laptop are in the back left corner of the machine, and it makes the reader have to be facing off to the side. While this doesn't really affect functionality at all, would it really of killed them to make the cable 4-6" longer? As you can see from the front, there are 4 ports, however this reader does support up to 6 different kinds of media. I only tested it with Compact Flash & SmartMedia, however it worked flawlessly.