I am not ashamed to say that I am still a huge advocate of physical storage. The cloud has its place in our lives, but there are still plenty of limitations to it all. We can discuss that later though. Right now we are going to take a quick look at a product from Leef, the Leef Bridge 3.0.
The Leef Bridge 3.0 is a portable USB OTG storage solutions from Leef. The company is highly geared towards speed and portability with a product line up that covers Android, iOS, PC and Mac. The last few products I looked at was their Leef Access and their 32GB UHS-1 micro SD card. Both served their purpose and work quite well still for various needs. The previous Leef Bridge was simply called the Bridge and was based on USB 2.0 technology. The newer Bridge 3.0 harnesses the read/write speed boost of USB 3.0 technology. In simple terms, it makes transferring data to and from devices faster than its previous counter part.
Before we get into the speeds of the Bridge 3.0, lets take a quick look at the device its self. The Bridge 3.0 measures in a small 21.7 x 38.6 x 8 mm and weighs next to nothing. On one side of the storage block is a Micro USB plug and the other side offers up a full size USB.
(Full size SD card shown for size)
The whole thing has a shell over the top, think turtles. This cover gives it a sleek look, but it also protects the USB plugs from getting bent. On the underside we have a button that releases the small lock allowing you to slide the  actual unit to the correct USB plug you are after. Just under the button is a white LED light that lights up when it is connected to a device. when it is working, or data is being transferred to or from it, the light blinks rapidly.
As for performance, the Leef Bridge 3.0 certainly delivers when compared to the previous generation as well as a few other similar devices I have tested recently such as the Imation Link Mobile Express. The previous Leef Bridge offered up recorded speeds from PCMag with write speeds of 8.6 MB/s and read speeds of 17.8 MB/s. The newer variant clocked in at 124.4 MB/s read and 21.61 MB/s write according to CrystalDiskMark when tested through a USB 3.0 port. The read speed is similar to the Imation Link, but the write speeds are nearly double.
On the device front I tested the Bridge 3.0 using the A1 SD Bench app on a Samsung Galaxy Note 4. Of course, individual device performance will vary. The test results came back with 29.49 MB/s read and 10.64 MB/s write.
Just about any semi recent Android device should be compatible with the drive. Leef lists it for anything over Android 4.1, and every device I have ever run into supports USB OTG ( on the go ). I am sure there are some that don’t so be sure to check your device for compatibility. Leef actually has a relatively large list of compatible devices on their site. Although, it is missing some of the newer devices.
Leef offers the new Bridge 3.0 in a 16GB, 32GB ad 64GB variants of the device. Price wise you are looking $17.99, $28.99 and $51.99 respectively. These price tags also put it in line with others in the USB OTG dual plug devices such as the Patriot Stellar Boost XT
Use cases for devices like these are pretty broad. You could easily load it up with movies or TV show files from your PC and have instant access to them on other laptops, phones or tablets. You could keep it handy on trips when you are snapping a million photos and fill up your limited built-in storage on your phone. There really are quite a few good uses for them.
All in all, if you are in need of an inexpensive way to boost storage on the go, the Leef Bridge 3.0 is a pretty solid option. You can find them on Amazon from third-party re-sellers
