USB Flash Drive Showdown
Conclusions
Looking at the results, there are some obvious winners and losers.
The Winners
Here are the USB drives that have earned the "moka5 Five-Star Rating" for their high performance, reasonable price, and convenience.
Patriot XPORTER XT 2GB,4GB
The Patriot XPORTER XT is one of our favorite USB drives, and for good reason. Excellent raw performance (31MB/s read, 25MB/s write) translates into good real-world performance. The drive is encased in a tough rubber substance and feels durable - we've dropped it on the floor numerous times and it just bounces around like a football. The only downside is the rubber does seem to attract lint as it sits in your pocket.
Crucial Gizmo! overdrive 2GB
The Crucial Gizmo! overdrive has the highest burst read performance of any of the drives we tested. Although the real-world performance is a little below other drives, the Gizmo! more than makes up for it with its low price. It is the cheapest 2GB drive that we tested. The case is hard white plastic and form factor is small and convenient. Minor issues: Unlike other drives, the case is not waterproof and the cap is easy to lose.
Kingston DataTraveler Elite 2GB
The Kingston DataTraveler Elite is special because it includes hardware-based AES-128 encryption support to keep your data secure. After plugging in the drive, you run a little program that asks you for a password and unlocks the encrypted portion of the drive. Even with the encryption (and mediocre raw benchmark scores), the Kingston achieves outstanding real-world performance. (We suspect the Kingston drivers implement some kind of buffering to perform the encryption, which accounts for the good performance.) At $82, the drive is pricey, but worth it if you want to store sensitive information.
Corsair Flash Voyager 8GB
The Corsair Flash Voyager 8GB shows that siblings aren't always alike. The 2GB and 4GB versions of the Corsair have some of the worst real-world performance of any USB drive we tested. But the 8GB version has fairly good performance. Coupled with the large 8GB capacity, a small ergonomic form factor and neoprene rubber coating, and a reasonable price for the capacity, the Corsair Flash Voyager looks like a winner if you crave capacity.
Super Talent Fireball 2GB
You can tell the Super Talent Fireball is fast just by the fireball graphic on the side. It is one of the faster drives we've tested. And like the Patriot XPORTER XT, it comes encased in a durable rubber coating.
The Losers
Our tests also expose ten losers that you should avoid if possible. We gave them only one star. Some of them, like the AData, look like they would be decent from the raw benchmark scores, but have serious real-world performance problems that make them unusable. Others like the PNY Attaché lose out for being too expensive for mediocre performance. In any case, there are plenty of cheap and high-performing drives to choose from.
Check back soon!
This concludes our USB flash drive review. Check back soon for the second part of the series, where we evaluate USB media players as storage devices.
