Freecom has had 15 years to build up its reputation as an external storage specialist and was the first manufacturer to develop and sell external CD-ROM solutions. It's therefore not surprising that the company has now developed the world's smallest 2.5-inch external hard drive, at a highly competitive price.

The Mobile Drive XXS comes in three capacities - 160GB (at £44.99), 250GB (at £59.99) and 320GB (at £79.99) - and we were able to assess the middle-of-the-range model. The first thing that strikes you when it comes out of the box is how compact and lightweight is the casing: it weighs a miniscule 155g and has roughly the same dimensions as an old-fashioned cigarette case (109.8 x 79.5 x 13.5mm).

Entirely cocooned inside a form-fitting black rubber sleeve for optimal grip, being the world's first native USB interface 2.5-inch hard drive, it emerges as the perfect solution for computer users on the move, whether for PC or Mac, as there's no necessity for further heavy shielding, convertors or extra components.

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One end of the rubber shield can easily be opened should you decide to upgrade, although pulling the sleeve off does take fair bit of muscle-flexing. Supplied with the drive is an admittedly short USB cable connector; a longer one might be more practical for you, as it won't cost a fortune and wouldn't take up much more space.

No additional power supply is needed as the drive relies upon bus powered connectivity, and likewise no extra installation disks are required as this occurs automatically and swiftly once the USB connection with the parent computer is established. Windows Vista users will be happy to know that there are no compatibility issues and you'll also notice how quietly it operates, as its power consumption is low.

Freecom claims the peak transfer speed is around 480MB/s for the most basic data but the average for photos in our tests was around 23MB/s, which is about the norm for a Samsung 5,400rpm drive - and that is basically what this is. When we copied 558MB of MP3 files across from a PC folder it managed the whole operation in 37 seconds which was a transfer speed of 15MB/s; not hugely swift.

In short, if you're not too worried about ultra fast copy time then it's hard to imagine a more useful and economic hard drive to carry around with you.

For once the publicity seems to accurately describe the product as it's hard to picture an external hard drive of this capacity being any smaller, lighter or easier to operate. It may not be the fastest in the pack but at the price it has to be the ideal mobile storage companion.