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I bring to you my Kingston HyperX USB3.0 DataTraveler 64gb review, I received this so I thought Hey why not toss a review up and see how it performs, as I know that's what everyone does when they receive something new, They test it and make sure it works properly!
So to start off, Lets get the specs down.
Specs are:
Capacities: 64GB, 128GB, 256GB
Dimensions: 2.952" x 0.916" x 0.626" (74.99mm x 23.29mm x 15.9mm)
Operating Temperature: 32°F to 140°F (0°C to 60°C)
Storage Temperature: -4°F to 185°F (-20°C to 85°C)
Practical: durable casing with a solid lanyard loop
Speed:
USB 3.0: 225MB/s read and 135MB/s write
USB 2.0: 30 MB/s read and 30MB/s write
Backwards Compatible - with USB 2.0
ReadyBoost Support
Guaranteed: five-year warranty, free technical support
Compatible with: Windows 8/8.1, Windows 7 (SP1), Windows Vista (SP1, SP2), Windows XP (SP3), Mac OS X v.10.6.x+, Linux v.2.6.x+ (USB 3.0 connectivity requires a USB 3.0 port)
The system specs I used was
AMD A10-6800K APU
Asrock FM2A85X Extreme6 FM2 A85X motherboard
2x4gb G.skill Ripjaws DDR3 1600mhz
Fractal Arc Midi R2 Case
Fractal Tesla R2 650W Power Supply Unit
Kingston SSDNow V300 Series 2.5″ 60GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive
OCZ Sata 2 30gb SSD
seagate 1tb solid state hybrid drive
LG 24X DVD Burner
Windows 8.1 64bit OS
Asus Wifi card Asus PCE-N13
Dell 2407wfp Monitor 1920×1200
So Looking at the packaging, It's completely sealed with the Kingston HyperX Logo, Showing off the 64GB capacity plus the read/write speeds including USB 3.0 Use.
On the back side shows some specs regarding USB 2.0 vs 3.0, With information saying it is Shock-Resistant, as well as noting some of the listed capacity on a flash storage device is used for formatting and other functions and thus is not available for data storage.
So the actual capacity for data storage is less than what is listed on the products.
With that said, the storage actually available is around 58GB (58.8GB according to windows)
Tearing apart the packaging, you can see the contents which is the USB Thumb Drive, with the cap off, and as well as in the background image piece a Case Badge was located in a pocket of the background information/spec sheet which also is a warranty reminder and letting you know what Kingston makes ect.
I found this to be Pretty cool giving us a case badge for a HyperX Product.
Time to plug it in!!! Here we can see the drive is clearly plugged in, but if it's not doing anything, it will not blink so it lets you know you are doing nothing on the drive anymore meaning it's a auto indicator your file transfers are done.
While transferring, The drives Lighting system blinks while in use transferring files using a Blue LED to show activity.
Now to get into some performance benchmarks.
I used ATTO Disk Benchmark and I seen some Amazing results and some BAD Results.
The good? 267MB/s Read speed which is Much faster then the rated 235MB/s Speed.
The bad? I only got 62MB/s Write speed when it is rated for 135MB/s, I tried updating USB 3.0 drivers, using it on a different system, but I kept getting the same results.
I found this awkward as usually ATTO Give's correct results usually, so maybe I shall contact Kingston later on about this.
Another benchmark I used was Crystal Disk Mark, Here we can see it Outperform the 225MB/s Read reaching 290MB/s which is just great!
Then the write speed reaching 173MB/s was just breath taking, as it is rated for 135MB/s so here's some good news now, but moving on to the random read and write.
We can see that the Read speed impresses myself again with 227MB/s Still great! but then the random write 0.898MB/s is severely sad to see.
After the benchmarks used above, I did some research to find some Real-world like benchmarks.
So I took AS SSD for a try, and ran some testing.
I went to tools and ran the copy benchmark to get to this, So first I ran all the tests at once.
The results were not near the speeds it is rated, but this gives you a general idea what the drive will actually operate at.
After that, I ran all the tests solo one by one to see if results would matter in-case of running them one after another, Turns out No, so it's giving a good general idea still of what the speeds should actually show as in real world situations.
With those benchmarks giving some idea what they will act like, I decided Hey... Lets try some real world situations as well just for the Fun of it and find w/e I can on my Harddrives to transfer over!
Then here where it got messy trying to capture the results while having the patience to snipping tool it.
So for those wanting to see what it can really do Writing... Here you go!
First up, A folder consisting of Photo's from a Alaska Cruise my parents went on and traveled around alaska for 10 Days.
The images total in the folder was 1,012 with a file size ranging from 5mb to 15mb, and the total size of the folder was 6.43 GB
So while transferring, the speed would dip down a few times all the way to 30MB/s, But the Max speed it ever got was about 105MB/s staying more in the areas of the 90's, I found that Photo's would usually be put on a Thumbdrive and was disappointed that I couldn't even reach the 135MB/s Speeds even for one file.
So for two other types, I tried 2 different games ranging from a smaller file size to a larger file size.
First up was Heroes Of Newerth a MOBA game, It had 28 Folders and 677 Files located in it at a size of 2.02GB.
So while transferring the game over to the Thumbdrive, It started off low, Then went even Lower but steadily came up reaching the speed of 135MB/s and then wait what? Yes you see It reached 147MB/s which is performing More then the speed we were promised, which is Quite nice to transfer games between computers so you don't have to install.
Last is World Of Warcraft a MMORPG, It had 70 Folders and 203 Files located in it at a size of 23.3GB
Transferring the game it started low and immediately jumped up reaching 140MB/s Transfer speeds so Once again Still reaching the Rated speeds and beating it.
Now If you have games that are huge such as World Of Warcraft, Then you must know how annoying it is when something Breaks in the game from a Update or bad addons ect. Forcing you to re-install all over again, or hey your addons in World Of Warcraft just got a Update so you wanna backup the wow folder before installing them in-case something happens such as losing all the information put into your addons, Then this would be perfect to do so, as Not everyone has a SSD over 120GB, But also don't want to lug a SSD around as a permanent solution to your backups.
A thumbdrive is always nice to have compared to a external, as External SSD's are usually expensive still, and Mechanical Hard Drives are not usually Shock absorbent without a Fair price, Not to mention the speeds do not match a Flash Drives speed usually.
Another thing to note is that You will always have the chance of losing a cable to your external, or something happening to the cable like running it over.
Usb Thumbdrives with great speeds and Capacity IMO is used more then a External Hard-drive because it allows Portability meaning more Daily usage, and prevents some things that can happen, and easier to recover files from as well.
At a Price point of $69.99 recently on retailers websites...
Overall I would rate this a 4/5
Regardless of some of the issues with speed, It still is a USB Drive and not a Sata drive, With the performance and stability over my tests It surely passes in my books as It is currently Affordable, Looks Good, Also comes in higher storage if you would like more than 64gb.
Kingston Definitely made this worthy of their HyperX Brand bringing a High performing USB 3.0 Device that can handle some pretty insane transfers without losing stability of speed.
Pro's:
Speeds match/near real-world usage
USB light indicator showing in use
Great capacity
Fair Size
Con's:
The rubber casing is as slick as the metal casing
Doesn't come with something like a Key-ring for the Lanyard loop
Cap is not attached to the USB drive by a flip top or a string (possibility of losing cap)
So to start off, Lets get the specs down.
Specs are:
Capacities: 64GB, 128GB, 256GB
Dimensions: 2.952" x 0.916" x 0.626" (74.99mm x 23.29mm x 15.9mm)
Operating Temperature: 32°F to 140°F (0°C to 60°C)
Storage Temperature: -4°F to 185°F (-20°C to 85°C)
Practical: durable casing with a solid lanyard loop
Speed:
USB 3.0: 225MB/s read and 135MB/s write
USB 2.0: 30 MB/s read and 30MB/s write
Backwards Compatible - with USB 2.0
ReadyBoost Support
Guaranteed: five-year warranty, free technical support
Compatible with: Windows 8/8.1, Windows 7 (SP1), Windows Vista (SP1, SP2), Windows XP (SP3), Mac OS X v.10.6.x+, Linux v.2.6.x+ (USB 3.0 connectivity requires a USB 3.0 port)
The system specs I used was
AMD A10-6800K APU
Asrock FM2A85X Extreme6 FM2 A85X motherboard
2x4gb G.skill Ripjaws DDR3 1600mhz
Fractal Arc Midi R2 Case
Fractal Tesla R2 650W Power Supply Unit
Kingston SSDNow V300 Series 2.5″ 60GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive
OCZ Sata 2 30gb SSD
seagate 1tb solid state hybrid drive
LG 24X DVD Burner
Windows 8.1 64bit OS
Asus Wifi card Asus PCE-N13
Dell 2407wfp Monitor 1920×1200
So Looking at the packaging, It's completely sealed with the Kingston HyperX Logo, Showing off the 64GB capacity plus the read/write speeds including USB 3.0 Use.
On the back side shows some specs regarding USB 2.0 vs 3.0, With information saying it is Shock-Resistant, as well as noting some of the listed capacity on a flash storage device is used for formatting and other functions and thus is not available for data storage.
So the actual capacity for data storage is less than what is listed on the products.
With that said, the storage actually available is around 58GB (58.8GB according to windows)
Tearing apart the packaging, you can see the contents which is the USB Thumb Drive, with the cap off, and as well as in the background image piece a Case Badge was located in a pocket of the background information/spec sheet which also is a warranty reminder and letting you know what Kingston makes ect.
I found this to be Pretty cool giving us a case badge for a HyperX Product.
Time to plug it in!!! Here we can see the drive is clearly plugged in, but if it's not doing anything, it will not blink so it lets you know you are doing nothing on the drive anymore meaning it's a auto indicator your file transfers are done.
While transferring, The drives Lighting system blinks while in use transferring files using a Blue LED to show activity.
Now to get into some performance benchmarks.
I used ATTO Disk Benchmark and I seen some Amazing results and some BAD Results.
The good? 267MB/s Read speed which is Much faster then the rated 235MB/s Speed.
The bad? I only got 62MB/s Write speed when it is rated for 135MB/s, I tried updating USB 3.0 drivers, using it on a different system, but I kept getting the same results.
I found this awkward as usually ATTO Give's correct results usually, so maybe I shall contact Kingston later on about this.
Another benchmark I used was Crystal Disk Mark, Here we can see it Outperform the 225MB/s Read reaching 290MB/s which is just great!
Then the write speed reaching 173MB/s was just breath taking, as it is rated for 135MB/s so here's some good news now, but moving on to the random read and write.
We can see that the Read speed impresses myself again with 227MB/s Still great! but then the random write 0.898MB/s is severely sad to see.
After the benchmarks used above, I did some research to find some Real-world like benchmarks.
So I took AS SSD for a try, and ran some testing.
I went to tools and ran the copy benchmark to get to this, So first I ran all the tests at once.
The results were not near the speeds it is rated, but this gives you a general idea what the drive will actually operate at.
After that, I ran all the tests solo one by one to see if results would matter in-case of running them one after another, Turns out No, so it's giving a good general idea still of what the speeds should actually show as in real world situations.
With those benchmarks giving some idea what they will act like, I decided Hey... Lets try some real world situations as well just for the Fun of it and find w/e I can on my Harddrives to transfer over!
Then here where it got messy trying to capture the results while having the patience to snipping tool it.
So for those wanting to see what it can really do Writing... Here you go!
First up, A folder consisting of Photo's from a Alaska Cruise my parents went on and traveled around alaska for 10 Days.
The images total in the folder was 1,012 with a file size ranging from 5mb to 15mb, and the total size of the folder was 6.43 GB
So while transferring, the speed would dip down a few times all the way to 30MB/s, But the Max speed it ever got was about 105MB/s staying more in the areas of the 90's, I found that Photo's would usually be put on a Thumbdrive and was disappointed that I couldn't even reach the 135MB/s Speeds even for one file.
So for two other types, I tried 2 different games ranging from a smaller file size to a larger file size.
First up was Heroes Of Newerth a MOBA game, It had 28 Folders and 677 Files located in it at a size of 2.02GB.
So while transferring the game over to the Thumbdrive, It started off low, Then went even Lower but steadily came up reaching the speed of 135MB/s and then wait what? Yes you see It reached 147MB/s which is performing More then the speed we were promised, which is Quite nice to transfer games between computers so you don't have to install.
Last is World Of Warcraft a MMORPG, It had 70 Folders and 203 Files located in it at a size of 23.3GB
Transferring the game it started low and immediately jumped up reaching 140MB/s Transfer speeds so Once again Still reaching the Rated speeds and beating it.
Now If you have games that are huge such as World Of Warcraft, Then you must know how annoying it is when something Breaks in the game from a Update or bad addons ect. Forcing you to re-install all over again, or hey your addons in World Of Warcraft just got a Update so you wanna backup the wow folder before installing them in-case something happens such as losing all the information put into your addons, Then this would be perfect to do so, as Not everyone has a SSD over 120GB, But also don't want to lug a SSD around as a permanent solution to your backups.
A thumbdrive is always nice to have compared to a external, as External SSD's are usually expensive still, and Mechanical Hard Drives are not usually Shock absorbent without a Fair price, Not to mention the speeds do not match a Flash Drives speed usually.
Another thing to note is that You will always have the chance of losing a cable to your external, or something happening to the cable like running it over.
Usb Thumbdrives with great speeds and Capacity IMO is used more then a External Hard-drive because it allows Portability meaning more Daily usage, and prevents some things that can happen, and easier to recover files from as well.
At a Price point of $69.99 recently on retailers websites...
Overall I would rate this a 4/5
Regardless of some of the issues with speed, It still is a USB Drive and not a Sata drive, With the performance and stability over my tests It surely passes in my books as It is currently Affordable, Looks Good, Also comes in higher storage if you would like more than 64gb.
Kingston Definitely made this worthy of their HyperX Brand bringing a High performing USB 3.0 Device that can handle some pretty insane transfers without losing stability of speed.
Pro's:
Speeds match/near real-world usage
USB light indicator showing in use
Great capacity
Fair Size
Con's:
The rubber casing is as slick as the metal casing
Doesn't come with something like a Key-ring for the Lanyard loop
Cap is not attached to the USB drive by a flip top or a string (possibility of losing cap)
