Speed Line USB 3.0 16GB

Packaging & Contents

The Intenso Speed Line ships in a plastic bubble wrap. On the front of the package we found the capacity of the drive and details of a two year warranty. No read/write speed ratings were indicated on either the front or back of the package.

Box Front

Box Back

Dimensions & Weight

The Intenso Speed Line measures 5.3cm long, 1.8cm wide and 0.7cm high. This is the smallest flash drive we have seen to date. With these dimensions there is no chance of obstructing adjacent ports on a computer, the drive is barely thicker than the USB port its self. The Intenso weighs just 9 grams making it extremely light as well as small.

Build Quality

The body of Intenso Speed Line is reasonably solid and dense. There is a red LED indicator light on the back of the drive which is barely visible but flashes when the drive is in operation. The cap does not attach particularly well leaving it at risk of loss and the pin at the back of the drive which can be used to attach a keychain is also pretty weak.

Front

Back

Test System

CrystalDiskMark Speed Test^[FAQ]

CrystalDiskMark is a free disk benchmarking utility that is very simple to use. It takes eight measurements: the read and write speeds in megabytes per second (MBps) for sequential, 512KB, random 4KB and 4KB parallel disk operations. There are more screenshots from this benchmark posted on the web than any other, probably due to its clean and simple display. There is further information, including instructions on how to benchmark your own drives, on the CrystalDiskMark wiki page.

CrystalDiskMark Score

The Intenso scored 81/19 MB/s in the sequential read/write tests. Both of these scores are about average for a USB 3.0 flash drive. The area that stands out most for the Emtec is its weak 4K read score of just 2.4 MB/s which is amongst the lowest scores we have seen. In practical terms this drive is not well suited to running portable applications.

CrystalDiskMark Benchmark Speed Test

ATTO Disk Benchmark^[FAQ]

The Atto Disk Benchmark has probably been around for longer than any other disk benchmarking software, and you can tell from its dated interface! The utility was designed to measure regular disk drive performance but it's more than up to the task of measuring both USB flash drive and SSD speeds as well. The utility measures disk performance rates for various sizes of file and displays the results in a bar chart showing read and write speeds at each file size. The results are displayed in megabytes per second (MBps). There is further information, including instructions on how to benchmark your own drive, on the Atto wiki page.

ATTO Benchmark Speed Test

ATTO Score

The ATTO results for the Intenso are broadly in line with the CrystalDiskMark scores and at 88/20 MB/s come in over Intensos claimed read/write speeds of 60/25 MB/s.

AS SSD Real World Copy Speed^[FAQ]

The AS SSD benchmarking program was recently developed specifically for benchmarking SSD's. The utility is able to take several measurements that are well suited to solid state drives. One of the tests, ISO copy, is also relevant to slower storage devices including flash drives. The ISO copy test places two large 500MB files in a folder on the drive and then times how long it takes to copy the folder to another location on the same drive. The result is reported in both MBps and time taken. It's a real-world test that gauges a drives ability to read and write at the same time. Drives that have a good balance between their read and write speed fare relatively well on this test. There is further information, including instructions on how to use it to benchmark your own drive, on the AS SSD wiki page.

Real World Copy Speed Score

This test shows that the Intenso Speed Line would take 69.30 seconds to create a copy of a large 1GB video file. Generally flash drives complete this test at roughly half their sequential write rates. The Intenso performed relatively well in this test.

AS-SSD Copy Benchmark Speed Test

Conclusion

The Intenso Speed Line has a slightly below average performance profile for a USB 3.0 thumb drive but it is priced extremely aggressively making it excellent value for money at this time. As well as representing good value for money the Intenso is also both the smallest and the lightest thumb drive we have seen to date. The only thing to watch out for with this drive is its below average 4K read speed which makes it unsuitable for hosting applications or operating systems.

USBFlashPro
level
1,312

Original Review by:  
Updated 11 years ago.