TLDR; Just ignore this topic if you're not looking for or can contribute to the value leaders for modern USB flash drives. I have seen the same reviews anyone can pull up with a google search and they are lacking, to say the least.
SO, I got this Teamgroup C145, 128GB USB flash drive in the mail today for $11. I didn't expect much, love the GB:$ ratio, but it's poorly made (structurally weak) and slow, averaging about 16.5MB/s write speed.
I could go into detail about structurally weak but let's say I thought it felt very light, very thin plastic including the casing seams moving when I squeezed it, so not wanting to wonder about using it, I popped it open and saw a pretty fragile construction, then filled it with epoxy to eliminate the weakness so now it is extremely rugged. I do not want to bother doing this!
SO, what are your favorite lowest cost flash drives that are very sturdy, but more importantly, which current models do you deem worth the price increase for higher performance. I'll share a few observations I made, without owning some of these.
- Sandisk Ultra Fit and Ultra Flair, (and probably Loop, Luxe, Extreme Go, and others) are prone to overheating and slow down to sub-15MB/s on extended writes. Some people even have them stutter, and lockup from heat. Build quality is high, they're very sturdy.
- Samsung Bar Plus, this would be the only flash drive I ever buy if it were more than double the speed, has heat issues and slows down similar to, but not as bad as the Sandisk Ultras.
- Transcend Jetflash 910, seems to have performance rivaling a Sandisk Extreme Pro but at lower cost. I do have a Sandisk Extreme Pro and have no regrets buying it years ago but they are pricey, now over 4X the cost per GB in some sizes. Both of these are reasonably well built.
- Arcanite AK58, seems a pretty reasonable performancerice ratio. I don't have one of these, have no idea about build quality.
- Vansuny, ?? Seems like a generic is trying to make it into the big leagues unless the specs are just a lie. I have never bought *this* generic a flash drive before. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08LGKDG1J
- Patriot Supersonic Rage 2 or Rage Elite (same thing internally?) used to be a valueerformance leader but their prices did not drop with the last flash density increase like everyone else so they are more of a yesterday's choice. They are fairly sturdy.
- Corsair Voyager GTX, costs so much that it is a bit of a joke. No USB3 flash drive should cost over twice what the same capacity and higher performance SSD costs. I accept the rationale that performance at a small size is worth something but when it costs no more to make it, that is a hard pill to swallow. They are fairly sturdy.
- PNY Pro Elite, looks sturdy, specs (and benchmarks) look similar to the Patriot Supersonics and at simliar price points.
Have you found a hidden gem, a flash drive that performs beyond its pay grade and is sturdy? Please do not just tell me some benchmark score that involves the OS caching, any performance metric should be long enough (writes) that the cache is exhausted. For example if you write 40GB to it, what is the average speed at the end? Crystal diskmark, etc benchmark tools mean nothing to me compared to real world file performance with large sequential file reads and writes.
SO, I got this Teamgroup C145, 128GB USB flash drive in the mail today for $11. I didn't expect much, love the GB:$ ratio, but it's poorly made (structurally weak) and slow, averaging about 16.5MB/s write speed.
I could go into detail about structurally weak but let's say I thought it felt very light, very thin plastic including the casing seams moving when I squeezed it, so not wanting to wonder about using it, I popped it open and saw a pretty fragile construction, then filled it with epoxy to eliminate the weakness so now it is extremely rugged. I do not want to bother doing this!
SO, what are your favorite lowest cost flash drives that are very sturdy, but more importantly, which current models do you deem worth the price increase for higher performance. I'll share a few observations I made, without owning some of these.
- Sandisk Ultra Fit and Ultra Flair, (and probably Loop, Luxe, Extreme Go, and others) are prone to overheating and slow down to sub-15MB/s on extended writes. Some people even have them stutter, and lockup from heat. Build quality is high, they're very sturdy.
- Samsung Bar Plus, this would be the only flash drive I ever buy if it were more than double the speed, has heat issues and slows down similar to, but not as bad as the Sandisk Ultras.
- Transcend Jetflash 910, seems to have performance rivaling a Sandisk Extreme Pro but at lower cost. I do have a Sandisk Extreme Pro and have no regrets buying it years ago but they are pricey, now over 4X the cost per GB in some sizes. Both of these are reasonably well built.
- Arcanite AK58, seems a pretty reasonable performancerice ratio. I don't have one of these, have no idea about build quality.
- Vansuny, ?? Seems like a generic is trying to make it into the big leagues unless the specs are just a lie. I have never bought *this* generic a flash drive before. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08LGKDG1J
- Patriot Supersonic Rage 2 or Rage Elite (same thing internally?) used to be a valueerformance leader but their prices did not drop with the last flash density increase like everyone else so they are more of a yesterday's choice. They are fairly sturdy.
- Corsair Voyager GTX, costs so much that it is a bit of a joke. No USB3 flash drive should cost over twice what the same capacity and higher performance SSD costs. I accept the rationale that performance at a small size is worth something but when it costs no more to make it, that is a hard pill to swallow. They are fairly sturdy.
- PNY Pro Elite, looks sturdy, specs (and benchmarks) look similar to the Patriot Supersonics and at simliar price points.
Have you found a hidden gem, a flash drive that performs beyond its pay grade and is sturdy? Please do not just tell me some benchmark score that involves the OS caching, any performance metric should be long enough (writes) that the cache is exhausted. For example if you write 40GB to it, what is the average speed at the end? Crystal diskmark, etc benchmark tools mean nothing to me compared to real world file performance with large sequential file reads and writes.
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