Best Flash Drives: Fast, Roomy USB Storage in Your Pocket

[Gillygong]

I have two 1Tb Kingston Datatraveller max drives and both suffer serious slowdown with files around 4Gb and above !. Write speed drops to around 80Mb/s on a regular basis and is usually accompanied by heat. Each drive is of a different batch/revision. I contacted Kingston about this and after several emails to and fro they requested videos of the drives slowing down !?. At this point I gave up, they must know there's a cooling problem. I'm going to strip one of mine and attach copper heatsinks to each side with high efficiency pads... watch this space !

Indeed; trotting is what thumb drives do best. Thumb drives excel when dealing with small files in the MB (not my use case). Many throttle to annoyingly slow speeds to the point of being almost unusable when dealing with larger files (e.g. let’s say you’re moving five, ten or potentially more ~4 GB video files).

The Transcend TS512GESD310C has been the least throttling one I’ve come across up to this point, and is dual USB (USB-A on one end and USB-C at the other end) and a reasonable price for the various GB sizes. Thusly, I recommend it.

 

[Digital~Dreams]

Indeed; trotting is what thumb drives do best. Thumb drives excel when dealing with small files in the MB (not my use case). Many throttle to annoyingly slow speeds to the point of being almost unusable when dealing with larger files (e.g. let’s say you’re moving five, ten or potentially more ~4 GB video files).

The Transcend TS512GESD310C has been the least throttling one I’ve come across up to this point, and is dual USB (USB-A on one end and USB-C at the other end) and a reasonable price for the various GB sizes. Thusly, I recommend it.

Hmmm you work for Transcend lol ?.... On the serious side maybe this beastie has some kind of heatspreader or metal casing, nice that they have a 2Tb model and dual USB's !

 

[Gillygong]

Hmmm you work for Transcend lol ?.... On the serious side maybe this beastie has some kind of heatspreader or metal casing, nice that they have a 2Tb model and dual USB's !

Ha. I couldn’t work for anyone but myself tbh. I cannot vouch for the larger sizes, but the 512 performs decently for what it is. I was a Corsair Voyager GT user for years and to me they probably make the most reliable drives and they have some of the best customer service, at least from my experience, but I needed a dual USB (I’ve given Corsair feedback to add a dual USB product) and I first wasted my time buying the SanDisk one which throttled like crazy. Thankfully this Transcend performs much better—they should up the build quality though. Feels so light and I prefer something a bit more robust and the caps are barely held on and are not flippable, and I don’t mean end-to-end, but just capable to bring turned over—somehow even though both USB-A and USB-C stalks stick out in a symmetric fashion, internally the caps only go on in one rotation and are barely held on 🤔

Something like a metal Corsair GTX, but with dual USB would be ideal.

 

[Digital~Dreams]

Ha. I couldn’t work for anyone but myself tbh. I cannot vouch for the larger sizes, but the 512 performs decently for what it is. I was a Corsair Voyager GT user for years and to me they probably make the most reliable drives and they have some of the best customer service, at least from my experience, but I needed a dual USB (I’ve given Corsair feedback to add a dual USB product) and I first wasted my time buying the SanDisk one which throttled like crazy. Thankfully this Transcend performs much better—they should up the build quality though. Feels so light and I prefer something a bit more robust and the caps are barely held on and are not flippable, and I don’t mean end-to-end, but just capable to bring turned over—somehow even though both USB-A and USB-C stalks stick out in a symmetric fashion, internally the caps only go on in one rotation and are barely held on 🤔

Something like a metal Corsair GTX, but with dual USB would be ideal.

Absolutely, they could do a 'titanium' version with cooled metal body, caps that click on and reversible. Keychain hole and more detailed tech spec for the nerds like me. Yes my GT's were super reliable but not fast enough for me (and even they had caps that stupidly weren't reversible and kept slipping off unless degreased regularly !)

 

[Gillygong]

Absolutely, they could do a 'titanium' version with cooled metal body, caps that click on and reversible. Keychain hole and more detailed tech spec for the nerds like me. Yes my GT's were super reliable but not fast enough for me (and even they had caps that stupidly weren't reversible and kept slipping off unless degreased regularly !)

Actually, if the metal caps clipped on with a confident hold they could make them entirely hollow so they are not only flippable but swappable end-to-end, with a clear markers on the body to tell the user which way is up for the USB-A end use and which end was USB-C under the metal caps. We could be elected president!

 

[Digital~Dreams]

Actually, if the metal caps clipped on with a confident hold they could make them entirely hollow so they are not only flippable but swappable end-to-end, with a clear markers on the body to tell the user which way is up for the USB-A end use and which end was USB-C under the metal caps. We could be elected president!

Now yer talkin, programmable LED too (brightness and function).... President ?, naaa we're far too logical and progressive.

 

[Gillygong]

Every political discussion turns to something brown. I like flowers.

 

[USAFRet]

Actually, if the metal caps clipped on with a confident hold they could make them entirely hollow so they are not only flippable but swappable end-to-end, with a clear markers on the body to tell the user which way is up for the USB-A end use and which end was USB-C under the metal caps. We could be elected president!

I have a microSD card reader exactly like that.
USB-A on one end, microUSB on the other. Just a tiny bit larger, and the actual storage chips could be put inside.

 

[Digital~Dreams]

Every political discussion turns to something brown. I like flowers.

Zalman CPNS flower coolers ?, yeah brilliant, had them for years (going off topic now !)

 

[Gillygong]

Zalman CPNS flower coolers ?, yeah brilliant, had them for years (going off topic now !)

No, literally flowers. And USB thumb drives.

 

[Avro Arrow]

The Kingston DataTraveller Max has a USB-C connector that's too small for motherboards? How the hell did the people at Kingston manage to come up with something as hair-brained as that?

These things are super fast and probably have their place but a Hynix T31 1TB for $180 is probably a bit of a tough sell for most people, no matter how fast it is. I'm forced to wonder just how hot these things can get based on how hot a PCIe5 NVMe gets. High transfer rates aren't free. They cost electricity and heat.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Zalman CPNS flower coolers ?, yeah brilliant, had them for years (going off topic now !)

I like Superflower PSUs (like my EVGA 1000 G2 Supernova). 😉

 

[I]

Absolutely, they could do a 'titanium' version with cooled metal body, caps that click on and reversible. Keychain hole and more detailed tech spec for the nerds like me. Yes my GT's were super reliable but not fast enough for me (and even they had caps that stupidly weren't reversible and kept slipping off unless degreased regularly !)

The Transcend ESD310C is essentially the same specs as a Kingston Datatraveler Max A, but adding a USB-C connector at the other end.

Maybe firmware tweaked a little different since some benchmarks favor one or the other, though consider which capacity is being benchmarked, and add on the Transcend's 60C thermal throttling limit which people who consider USB flash drives disposable will dislike, is instead favorable to those who prefer long life. Personally I don't need max performance *at all costs*.

Specs, Silicon Motion SM2320 controller and Kioxia BiCS5 112L 3D TLC NAND.

I know the topic is OLD, but it was linked from the 2025 roundup article that declared the Kingston Datatraveler Max the best, and I'm not really feelin' it, I mean with the same hardware inside, and being shorter even with a USB-C on the other end, I'd take the ESD310C for any purpose other than pocket EDC where it's more convenient to have a USB plug slider cover instead of one that snaps on, but that slider cover creates another layer of insulating plastic over it, and makes it one of the longest length flash drives that I've seen in a while.

 

[Gillygong]

If the person knows they will only need USB-A or USB-C then I’m sure there’s no major issue for them carrying that Kingston, but if they want both USB shapes, then the Kingston is a no-no. I said before that most drives should probably have both USB shapes, and I think I still believe that. Many more options should exist, that’s for sure. An unjustified scarcity.