Build Quality

Corsair gives a lifetime warranty for their USB sticks. Their warranty is as far as that the stick is "waterproof and shock-absorbing". We wanted to find out how much it can really take.
To verify data integrity I copied two ISO files of about 1 GB to the USB stick and created an SFV file which holds the checksums of the ISOs.

Cooking

Freezing

Car

The tip of the stick with the connector took the whole weight and got deformed pretty badly. Using a flat screwdriver with a wide tip, it was easy to fix the connector, so that it would plug in.

Dish Washer

Toaster

Inside the toaster we measured peak temperatures of over 160°C.

Washing machine

Oven

Uh oh .. Bad! Bad!


It seems that the heat of the oven (215°C for 13 minutes is how I make my pizza) melted the clear insulation material. I think Corsair puts something like clear silicone over the PCB of the stick as sealant to make it waterproof. When I held the stick under water to clean the stick after the oven, some water got in and caused a short circuit when I connected the stick to the PC.


Near the little pins of the flash memory chip you can see how the sealant is working.

After I reformatted the drive in Windows I could store data on it again and everything is working fine.

Microwave?

Putting the stick into a microwave will definitely destroy it.
A microwave works by sending out RF energy at 2.4 GHz which heats the water inside the food. Putting metal inside the microwave is a bad idea as the microwave manual will tell you.
The PCB of the USB stick has many small traces made from copper. When the microwave is running the RF signals will induce current into the metal, similar to how radio signals induce a small current into an antenna.
In the microwave the energy is A LOT bigger, which makes the induced current big. As you know any current flowing inside a conductor creates heat because of the resistance of the metal. More current creates more heat, in the microwave the current will be big enough to melt the tiny wiring on the PCB and inside the flash chip. Pretty sparks will be the last you see from your USB stick, and no, Corsair won't accept an RMA for it.