Fastest Usb C Flash Drive
Melanie Wendelberger
USB flash drives been a popular option for decades for those who need local, pocketable access to key files. These tiny drives are still sold nearly everywhere (including at chain drug stores, usually at highly inflated prices), despite companies like Google, Microsoft, and DropBox making cloud storage a convenient and often free alternative (depending on capacity).
The line between flash drives and external SSDs is increasingly indistinct, and SK hynix's Tube T31 blurs it even more, by putting an actual M.2 drive on a small PCB and shoving it into a somewhat bulky but surprisingly speedy flash drive form factor. Capacity is limited to just 512GB and 1TB models, but this is the fastest "SSD stick" we've tested yet, surpassing Transcend's ESD310C and Kingston's DataTraveler Max drives on most of our tests. Priced at $85-$90 when we wrote this, it's also slightly more affordable than those drives at the 1TB capacity.
If you're after a simple portable drive and don't need 20 Gbps speeds or a capacity higher than 1TB, it's a great choice. Its bulk might get in the way of nearby ports on a desktop or hub. But on a laptop, the USB-A port (if you still have one) is likely set apart from other USB ports. And on a desktop, you probably have several USB-A ports to choose from, unlike USB-C.
Read: SK hynix Tube T31 Review
One thing to keep in mind when shopping is what type of ports you'll be plugging your flash drive into. Some drives are offered with either a USB-A connector or USB-C, and some come with adapters to convert from USB-A to USB-C or vice versa. A few drives have both connectors on the same drive, which is certainly more convenient than having to keep track of an adapter and have it with you every time you need it. All of the faster flash drives we've tested have a single Type-A or Type-C connector. Also, note that drives that promise speeds of 500 MB/s or more use USB 3.x Gen 2 (10 Gbps) ports. That means if you're plugging those drives into a USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen1 (5Gbps) port (those are still far more common than the faster Gen 2 ports), performance won't be as fast as it could be.
Still, the performance differences between the lower-cost, lower-performing drives in our testing below and the higher-performing 1TB drives that top our test results are at times nearly a factor of 10, especially when it comes to write speeds. So even when you plug one of the fastest drives into a slower 5Gbps port, you should get much better performance than you would if using an older or cheap sub-$20 flash drive.
We ran our benchmark tests on a custom desktop running Windows 10 Pro on an AMD Ryzen 7 3700X CPU and a Gigabyte X570 Aorus Master motherboard with 16GB of RAM and an older (but still speedy) Samsung 960 Pro boot drive. We also spot-checked our first few drives on a newer system using a Ryzen 5 5600X CPU and a much faster PCIe 4.0 Corsair MP600 Pro XT boot drive. But because none of these drives even get close to the bandwidth limitation of PCIe 3.0, there was no discernable performance differences between the two test systems.
All of our benchmark testing was done with drives plugged into the system's rear USB 3.1 Gen 2/ USB 3.2 (10 Gbps) ports. The Aorus board we used has one Type-C and one Type-A port rated for these speeds, so we were able to accommodate drives with both types of connectors.
To get a sense of how these flash drives compare to a larger (though still usually pocketable) external SSD, we also ran our flash drive tests on the Mushkin's CarbonX, a 1TB External SSD that's rated to similar speeds as the fastest flash drives, or "Up to 1,000 MBps." This drive is no longer widely available, but you can expect similar performance from some of the more affordable options on our Best External SSDs list.
Given the falling prices of external SSDs and their general ability to perform better on longer-duration workloads (and particularly small file writes, which we'll see shortly in testing) an external SSD is often a better option if you are going to frequently be moving large amounts of files on and off your drive, and especially if you plan to run programs from your portable storage device. The larger surface area and improved controllers and components of external SSDs tend to be better at those kinds of tasks, though there are of course noticeable performance differences in that product category as well.
We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test real-world file transfer performance with a custom 50GB dataset. We copy 4,617 files (images, videos, and software ISO files) to a folder on the test drive (write). Then, after leaving the system idle for five minutes, we run the same test in reverse, moving the test folder to a different location on our PCIe 4.0 testing drive.
Round two of our benchmarks sees the SK hynix drive rocket to the top in real-world read performance, about 135-142 MB/s faster than its closest competitors. And only Silicon Power's DS72 was faster on writes. This is a great showing for the SK hynix drive.
CrystalDiskMark (CDM) is a free and easy-to-run storage benchmarking tool that SSD companies commonly use to assign product performance specifications. It gives us insight into how each device handles different file sizes. We run this test at its default settings.
SK hynix also touts the Tube T31's "consistent performance, even when full." This sounds great, and indeed could be an important differentiator for some users. I filled the Tube T31 to roughly 90% of its capacity and, in both our DiskBench file transfer test and CrystalDiskMark, it performed roughly the same (within run-to-run variance) as it did when it was empty. But I did the same thing with the competing Transcend and Kingston drives, and those drives didn't slow down when nearly full, either. Buffalo's 2TB SSD-PUT did slow down in sequential speeds in the same scenario, but it was roughly 10-15%.
None of the drives we tested felt hot to the touch after testing. And we used an IR thermometer to check the temperature of several during a long 100GB write test. After several minutes of sustained writing, the Transcend and PNY drives got the warmest, but were still under 94 degrees Fahrenheit. The solid-feeling metal-clad Orico drive got up to just 83.4 degrees, and the similarly solid OWC Envoy Pro Mini remained the coolest, at just 78.5 degrees Fahrenheit. The tiny Samsung Fit Plus, which barely has any surface area compared to the other drives, topped out at 82.1 degrees in our testing. Doubtlessly the Samsung drive is helped here by the fact that it writes much more slowly than many of the larger drives.
The Silicon Power drives also perform fairly well overall, but were inconsistent on our tests. In Crystal Diskmark's sequential tests, they were the best flash drives we've tested yet, and they were also among the best on our 10GB DiskBench test. But on the PCMark 10 Data Drive benchmark, they consistently delivered scores that were roughly half of what the Transcend and Kingston drives we tested and they weren't particularly impressive in our 4K test, either.
Pricing for the 1TB models that we tested was also in an awkward middle area, between our favorite mainstream drive from Buffalo and the better-performing options from Transcend and Kingston. Still, if the price drops by $10-$20, these would be good options, particularly if you mostly want a drive to move files from one place to another rather than to run programs from, directly. Their physical design and build quality feels better than some of the more expensive options out there.
We tested more than a dozen drives for this list in the quest to find the best flash drives, and will be adding more in the near future. Many of the lower-capacity, lower-priced drives performed poorly overall, proving the adage "you get what you pay for." However, some expensive 1TB drives suffered from disappointing performance in some benchmarks, proving you don't always get a great drive even if you're willing to spend close to $100. Below are some of the drives that stood out but didn't make the list.
Orico USSD-X (512GB): Orico's latest flash drive is wrapped completely in metal, and feels surprisingly solid in your hand. And supposedly it will be offered in several colors. Its performance in our testing hovered between middle of the pack and near the top, excelling in our PCMark and Diskbench tests, especially. That said, its performance didn't stand above the rest in any single test, and at the time of testing, we couldn't find it for sale in the US. Hopefully, the company improves its supply issues, because this USB-A drive feels better to hold and use than arguably any other flash drive we've tested. And its performance is quite solid. We just need to know how much it will cost.
OWC Envoy Pro Mini (1TB): This drive was the second-fastest overall and sports a solid metal shell. But its design is overly complicated, as is its setup process (which forces you to agree to a EULA which, when we wrote this, was still 404ing). Really though, the primary problem with OWC's drive is price. At $149 for the most spacious 1TB model, it's nearly as expensive as the 2TB Buffalo drive. And often the Buffalo drive goes on sale for less.
Corsair Flash Voyager GTX (1TB): The zinc alloy housing of Corsair's 1TB flash drive feels like it could survive a bomb blast or two, and its performance is better than some competitors at this capacity. But its $286 asking price on Amazon (and even crazier $334 price directly from Corsair) feels like a bomb on your credit card bill. Buffalo's 1TB drive performed better in most of our tests and costs a quarter the price.
Which fast USB flash drive is best? The best and fastest USB flash drives are generally going to be SSD or Solid State. Assuming your Computer is at least USB 3.0 capable, flash thumb drives that are Solid State (SSD) are much more pleasant to work with than NAND based drives.