Right off the bat, SanDisk’s 16Gb Extreme USB 3.0 impressed me. It’s not the stupidly long name that did it, but the build quality and above-average speed of the device that won me over.
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Slowly buy surely
Despite USB 3.0 going strongs since 2008, we haven’t really warmed to its use. The reason’s simple enough. We still hang on to our older devices with US 2.0, therefore anything faster seems like a waste. It’s 2012 now, and every laptop comes with USB 3.0 so enough with the history lesson. This flash drive is fast, and you should feel bad if you don’t have it.
Extreme power, bro
The Extreme is a decent evolution of the USB flash drive. It’s long though, roughly twice the size of a normal flash drive but it could be down to the USB 3.0 hardware requirement. I’ve seen 32GB crammed onto the head of a pencil. In other words, as tech improves, it shrinks down. In under a year this flash drive will be smaller than a grain of sand. Well, a USB 3.0-sized grain of sand.
The mechanical clicking action of the flash drive pleases me to no end. Slide up, the USB clicks out. It’s kind of like a two-stage ejection:
Enough of that. Here’s how fast it is.
Speed sells
SanDisk says “transfer speeds of up to 190 MB/s”. We say, transfer speeds of 50 to 60 MB/s. Maybe. But this is still double the speed of USB 2.0 so there’s nothing really to complain about. You pay for speed, and you get it.
It’s much faster than what I’m used to. Even with speeds of only 50-60MB/s, the stick still excels. It’s all about the waiting really, an abstract period of time that is keenly noticed by the tech hardcore. If it takes long to boot up, it’s shit. If 1TB can’t copy over in 20 minutes or less, it’s upgrade time. So it’s very fast then? What more does a geek need.
Tell us what you really think
Here’s the meat of it. This flash drive looks great and is fast. Nothing else to it. Just as a note, it came with a boat-load of bloatware which I quickly formatted. Many will find a use for this software, which is listed here, but I hate all preloaded crap that either takes up space or slows the device down. If I have a 64GB flash drive, why the hell do I need 2GB of free cloud storage?
Get the hell outta here. Don’t get me started on password protecting the damn thing. If I wanted to spend an extra minute figuring out my password, I’d do so. In short, any sort of OEM software installed on any gadget is an instant fail. On a flash drive, more so.
I like it
I do. Great build, a nifty clicking action and nippy speeds places the USB 3.0 16GB Extreme Flash Drive on top of my list. It’s US$25 for the 16GB, US$40 for 32GB and US$83 for 64GB. A decent price for a must-have device.
