DataTraveler R3.0 USB 3.0 16GB

Packaging & Contents

The Kingston DataTraveler R3.0 ships on a plastic bubble wrap. There are claimed read/write speeds of 70/30 MB/s for USB 3.0 and 30/25 MB/s for USB 2.0 on the front of the packaging. We like the fact that Kingston tend to put 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 R3.0 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 R3.0 measures 7.0cm long, 2.2cm wide and 1.2cm high leaving it amongst the larger drives. With these dimensions this flash drive will likely 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. In terms of weight at 18 grams the R3.0 is slightly heavier than average for a flash drive.

Build Quality

The DataTraveler R3.0 has a chunky feel to it. We are pretty sure you could throw it off a tall building and find no harm had come to your data. This is mostly thanks to the generous rubber casing that houses the drive. There is a small blue LED indicator near the back of the drive and there is a strong and secure loop on one end of the drive where you can attach a key ring. The cap sticks on reasonably well but because the outside of the drive is so grippy there is still a substantial risk of cap loss. This drive has a very similar form factor to the age old Corsair Flash Voyager range of drives. One difference between this and the Voyager is that the cap can be clipped onto the back of this drive whereas on the Voyager it cannot.

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 R3.0 scored 96/47 MB/s in the sequential read/write tests. These speeds are above average for a USB 3.0 drive. The strongest area of relative performance for this drive was its 512K read speed which clocked in at 85.26 MB/s, only slightly slower than its sequential read of 95.91 MB/s. The R3.0 did not show any particular weaknesses in its performance profile and offers very solid all round performance.

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 R3.0 are broadly in line with its CrystalDiskMark scores and at 85/40 MB/s come in pleasantly higher than Kingston's 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 Kingston R3.0 would take 40.10 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 R3.0 performed relatively well in this test beating its expected score by 13%. To date we have only seen four USB 3.0 flash drives with higher real world copy speeds than the 26.78 MB/s achieved by the R3.0. All of the faster drives we have seen are significantly more expensive than the R3.0.

AS-SSD Copy Benchmark Speed Test

Conclusion

We like the Kingston Datatraveler R3.0 a lot. It has an extremely well-rounded performance profile, rock solid construction, good real world performance and comes at a below average price for a USB 3.0 flash drive. Kingston have done a great job with this drive and we expect it will do well over the coming months. We could not help but notice several similarities between this drive and the Corsair Flash Voyager both in terms of construction and performance profile. Based on the success of the Voyager, that bodes well for the Kingston R3.0. In absolute terms there are faster drives to be had at this time, as long as you are prepared to pay a little more.

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Original Review by:  
Updated 11 years ago.