It seems like the benefits are having the device lock/wipe itself after a set amount of attempts in case of a brute force attack and not having to run software to decrypt the drive on the device you plug it into.
I included a picture of the IronKey Keypad 200 but that's just because it's the first result that came up when I was looking for an example. There seem to be a few other manufacturers and models out there and they probably have different features.
I am curious what do you think of them? Do you think they are useful? Do you find it more a novelty?
It was an ExplainingComputers video titled Very Useful Small Computing Things that made me think of them.
I had one of the SanDisk flash drives that had some launcher thing on it and I had a password for some reason on it.
In high school, a classmate tried to guess it, 3 times and I lost everything on it forever, since it stupidly locked forever after 3 tries.
I had software projects from back then that I can never get back.. including a web browser. I could have had the next Firefox..
If you're out there, Liz: I'll never forgive that.
Liz taught you to make backups of data you value