DataTraveler Elite USB 3.0 16GB

Packaging & Contents

The DataTraveler Elite ships on a small piece of cardboard with a plastic bubble wrap housing the drive. There are claimed read/write speeds of 70/30 MB/s on the packaging. We like the fact that Kingston have put the read/write figures right on the box, a lot of the other manufacturers like to leave you guessing. There is also a warning on the back of the box advising that the drive's capacity will drop a little after you format it, this of course applies to all flash drives rather than this specific drive. The drive comes with a five year warranty which is clearly printed on the front bottom right of the package.

Box Front

Box Back

Dimensions & Weight

The DataTraveler Elite measures 6.9cm long, 2.2cm wide and 1.1cm high. With these dimensions this flash drive might obstruct adjacent ports on a computer so you might need to get an extension cable if you have a lot of devices connected to the same cluster of USB ports on your PC. The DataTraveler Elite weighs 12 grams making it lighter than average for a flash drive.

Build Quality

The DataTraveler Elite is reasonably well built, it has a retractable design that works well and there is a secure place to attach a keyring at the back. Inside the drive there is a blue indicator light which is only visible when the drive is active. In the hand this drive feels a little hollow but given its reasonable dimensions and below average weight that's really a niggle more than anything else.

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 DataTraveler Elite scored 76/36 MB/s in the sequential read/write tests. These headline sequential figures are not earth shattering but they are reasonable. The DataTraveler Elite performed best in the 4k read/write tests where it clocked in at 13/0.46 MB/s. This drive will do a reasonable job with any workload but it is particularly well suited to tasks involving lots of small files.

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 DataTraveler Elite are broadly in line with the CrystalDiskMark scores and at 73/38 MB/s come in over Kingstons claimed read/write speeds of 70/30 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 DataTraveler Elite would take 47.27 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 DataTraveler Elite performed as expected in this test.

AS-SSD Copy Benchmark Speed Test

Conclusion

The DataTraveler Elite has a very well-rounded performance profile and it excels in the area of small file (~4K) read/write speeds. With a headline sequential read/write speed of 76/36 MB/s the DataTraveler Elite does not break any records but it's respectable. The drive is slightly larger than most but it still only weighs 12 grams which is less than average for a usb pen drive. In terms of value this drive is excellent as it provides a very balanced all round performance at an extremely low cost.

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Original Review by:  
Updated 11 years ago.