Performance

USB 3.0

Patriot advertises speeds of up to 180 MB/s read and 50 MB/s write. Using ATTO, the RageXT does not manage to get to those speeds, but it does get quite close. Its write performance is obviously not its strong suite.


HD Tach paints a slightly better picture by actually hitting advertised read speeds, although its write performance is not quite there. There are also various large dips in read performance, but you should not notice them during daily use.


The Rage XT's read performance is excellent and tops our short list of USB 3.0 flash drives. The mediocre write performance may be forgiven with a drive of such compact size, especially in combination with its price tag.

USB 2.0

Not much to say about USB 2.0 performance. The drive itself is, more so than other drives, the bottleneck for small files and write performance regardless of whether a 2.0 or 3.0 USB port is used. Read speeds will, on the other hand, hit the ceiling with such an aging device.