Elecom's MR-C25 USB Card Reader Rotates

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If you’re one of those folks who regularly uses SD cards and their like (there are actually more than Secure Digital cards out there), then you probably have a pretty rough time of things when you use a laptop. Not too many laptops boast card readers, and that’s where the folks at Elecom want to help out with their MR-C25 card reader.

You can see from the pic above that it’s a pretty small device, but it could have some issues, depending on how your laptop’s laid out, in blocking ports since you plug it into a USB port.That’s why the Elecom MR-C25 not only offers card reading capabilities, it also rotates 180 degrees on demand so as to flip it over when you need access to another port for some reason. Like the pic above shows, you may be blocking a headset jack or another USB port or something when you have it in one way, so just flip it over and gain access to your formerly blocked ports.

Now, in some cases, this isn’t even a problem to begin with. Based on the layout of your laptop of choice, you may have a USB port that’s constantly available and wouldn’t have anything blocked to begin with. My current laptop, for example, has four USB ports, and blocking would be an issue in a couple cases. One such issue would block my Ethernet port, while another would actually prevent me from opening the DVD drive. Interestingly, though, having the 180 degree flip option would save my Ethernet port and instead block a large printer serial port, and would give me access to my DVD drive but require me to slip the Ethernet cable underneath it, both of which would be minor inconveniences at worst.  So if you look at your own laptop, and consider how the device would affect you, you might well see the possibilities in something like this. And that’s before the issue of USB hubs gets involved.

There’s no word on when this will arrive in the United States and at what price, but still, if you’re a big memory card user, you’ll want to know about this one.