Keychain Usb C Flash Drive

[Raymond Freedman]

Onceubiquitous, USB flash drives have declined in popularity with the advent of the cloud, but these portable devices have a lot to offer. Also known as thumb drives or memory sticks, flash drives provide storage to back up precious photos, play movies on the big screen, or copy files from one phone or laptop to another. They are affordable, small enough to fit on a keychain, and boast ever-increasing capacities and data transfer speeds.

After testing many, we've found these to be the best USB flash drives for various purposes and budgets. If you need more than 1 terabyte of storage, check out our guide to the Best Portable Storage Drives. And don't forget to back up your digital life.

Striking the perfect balance between speed, reliability, and price, the SanDisk Extreme Pro is tough to beat. It has a sleek and durable aluminum case with a loop for attaching it to a key ring. Push the plastic slider to reveal or hide the USB-A plug, and it's completely operable with one hand. In our tests, the speeds matched what SanDisk advertises (420 megabytes per second read, 380 MB/s write), making it ideal for anyone regularly copying files between devices. You get a variety of storage capacity options (up to 1 terabyte) and a lifetime warranty.

If you want a flash drive to back up and copy photos and other files from your smartphone, I like the iXpand Luxe. It has a Lightning plug for iPhones and iPads at one end and flips to reveal a USB-C plug at the other, so you can transfer files to or from Android devices and laptops. It has a metal casing with a loop for a keychain, and it is very slim. This design means that one plug is always exposed, and while SanDisk includes a separate plastic cover that slots on, I fear I'll inevitably lose it. Storage options top out at 256 gigabytes.

This USB flash drive is FIPS Certified 197 and has 256-bit AES-XTS encryption. It offers protection against brute-force attacks and BadUSB. Manufactured in the US, this drive is TAA compliant. Kingston suggests read and write speeds around 250 MB/s and 180 MB/s, respectively, but it did a little better than that in our tests (around 300 MB/s and 220 MB/s for larger files). Offered in USB-A or USB-C models, in sizes ranging from 8 GB to 256 GB, this drive comes with a five-year warranty.

You can get USB drives with all sorts of different security measures, but this Lexar model has a convenient fingerprint scanner. The body of the drive and scanner are metal with a loop for a keychain at the top and a black sliding plastic cover to protect the USB-A plug. You have to set the fingerprint scanner up on a Windows PC, and you can register up to 10 fingerprints. I registered my thumb, and it was scanned as soon as I slotted it into a computer, giving me access to the secure partition, which boasts 256-bit AES encryption.

There is also a public partition that can be accessed like a regular drive, so you can access some files without fingerprint protection if you need to. Read speeds are quite good, but write speeds are slow (150 MB/s read, 60 MB/s write). You can get it in 32-, 64-, 128-, or 256-gigabyte options. Lexar offers a three-year limited warranty on these drives.

Whether moving files from an Android phone to a PC or backing up from multiple devices, a flash drive that can cope with different ports is handy. The PNY Duo Link is compact, made of solid metal, and has a loop for attaching to a keyring. The plug section rotates to reveal both USB-C and USB-A connectors. I tested with my PC and a couple of Android phones, and I found that it worked well, though the USB-C might be too short if you have a thick case on your phone. My tests revealed write speeds around 110 MB/s and consistent read speeds of 225 MB/s. I tested the 64-GB version, but you can also get 128- or 256-gigabyte models. PNY offers a limited one-year warranty on its drives.

An elegant one-piece design makes this USB flash drive eye-catching and practical. The metal casing comes in silver or gray, with a curved design that makes it easy to withdraw and a loop so you can slip it on to a keyring. Test read speeds were just shy of 400 MB/s, with write speeds just over 100 MB/s, but the smaller drives (32 GB and 64 GB) are significantly slower. The Bar Plus is also a durable option, with Samsung claiming it is waterproof, shock-proof, temperature-proof, magnet-proof, and x-ray-proof. Samsung grants a five-year limited warranty on this drive.

Seeking a flash drive with a durable enclosure? The Survivor Stealth from Corsair is tough to beat. It has a ridged, cylindrical, anodized aluminum housing with ridged rubber covers at each side. One end has an opening for a keychain, and screws open to reveal the drive, which has a standard USB-A plug. When screwed shut properly, this drive is waterproof to a depth of 200 meters, and the enclosure is vibration- and shock-resistant. I dropped it in a glass of water and let the cat chase it around, and it still works fine. Its performance is fairly average (85 MB/s read, 70 MB/s write), so it takes a while to complete a big backup or transfer large files. Its storage capacities are also relatively small and go up to 128 gigs. Corsair offers a 10-year limited warranty on this drive.

Connectors: Most flash drives have USB-A connectors, but you can also get drives with USB-C, MicroUSB, and Lightning connectors. If you plan on using a flash drive with your smartphone and computer, snag one with both of the required types of connectors. You can also buy USB hubs with multiple ports or adapters, but pay close attention to the supported standard or it may limit your data transfer speeds. This Anker USB-A to USB-C adapter, for example, is USB 3.0.

Security: Remember that USB drives can cause security issues, particularly for businesses, and you should never plug in random drives you find lying around. If you plan to keep sensitive data on your flash drive, then consider biometric or passcode protection, and look into the level of encryption it offers. There are software services that offer encryption and allow you to password-protect your files on any USB flash drive.

Kingston DataTraveler and Kingston IronKey USB flash drives provide on-the-go file storage for photos, music, video and more. They are available in both standard and encrypted security for home, school, office and enterprise organisations.

The Lexar JumpDrive V40 USB flash drive provides reliable portable storage, allowing you to easily transfer, store, and share files on the go. The drive is designed with a convenient key chain hole, making it easy to tether to a key ring, attach to a backpack, or hook to a purse or briefcase.

All Lexar products undergo extensive testing in the Lexar Quality Labs, facilities with thousands of different cameras and digital devices to ensure performance, quality, compatibility, and reliability.

Some of the listed storage capacity is used for formatting and other purposes and is not available for data storage. 1GB equals 1 billion bytes.Product appearance, performance, software offerings, and packaging may vary depending on ship date and available inventory.Lexar is not liable for any loss of data or images.

The Patriot Supersonic Rage Prime USB 3.2 Gen 2 (250 GB) was faster than most flash drives we tested for this guide, and it offers nearly twice as much storage as our runner-up for around the same price. It has a retractable head and can transfer at USB 3.2 Gen 2 rates, the current maximum transfer speed for USB drives. Patriot covers it with a limited five-year warranty.

Supervising editor Arthur Gies, who contributed to the previous version of this guide, has been covering consumer technology and PC hardware since 2009. Prior to his time at Wirecutter, he covered laptops and PC hardware for outlets such as PCWorld, IGN, Joystiq, and Polygon. He has owned hundreds of (mostly terrible) USB flash drives since 2003.

In addition to the drives we tested for the previous version of this guide, we researched USB flash drives introduced in the past two years. After compiling a list of possible candidates, we then looked through owner reviews on retailer sites such as Amazon and Newegg before settling on the seven new drives we tested for this update.

The Patriot Supersonic Rage Prime USB 3.2 Gen 2 (250 GB) is the fastest and most reliable of all the USB-A flash drives we tested. Typically around $40 for 250 GB of storage, the pricing is great, and the drive has a retractable design, eliminating the need to keep track of a tiny, easily lost cap.

It has a great price per gigabyte. Though the price for a good, high-performance USB drive has stayed about the same since our previous update to this guide (around $40), the amount of storage you can get for that price has increased dramatically. The Patriot drive is a great example, providing 250 GB of storage rather than the previous standard of 128 GB.

Even if you have an extensive library of music or pictures, the Patriot drive can significantly cut down the time that transferring those files might take, in both directions. In our tests, it read a simple 8 GB file 7 seconds faster than our runner-up, and it wrote the same file 8 seconds faster.

It can get warm. Like most of the flash drives we tested, the Patriot Supersonic Rage Prime heats up after heavy use. In our tests, though, its plastic casing never grew warm enough to cause discomfort.

The head can collect lint. We prefer retractable USB drives because they eliminate the need to keep track of a tiny cap in order to protect and use your drive. But because the Patriot drive lacks a cover, those who regularly put their flash drives in pockets or bags might find that it attracts some dust. In practice, however, this is unlikely to happen.

It gets uncomfortably hot, and the housing feels cheap. Though this drive did not burn us, we could imagine that its high temperature might catch some people by surprise. As for the design, the sliding mechanism takes up the entire top half of the drive; plugging the drive in without activating the slide can be difficult as a result. Overall, unless you have a strict aversion to dongles and adapters and are married to USB-C with no thought of leaving, we recommend one of our USB-A picks with a USB-C adapter over this model.

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