Nobility N005 Pro USB 3.0 16GB

Packaging & Contents

The Adata Nobility Pro ships in a white box. Inside the box there is a lifetime warranty slip which also details download locations for the free software package that accompanies the drive ( we did not bother downloading it as most of the bundled software we have seen to date is pretty much useless compared to the freeware options that can easily be had elsewhere.). Adata have also indicated a maximum speed rating of 150 MB/s. Checking on the Adata website reveals that this drive has a claimed read/write speed of 150/25 MB/s.

Box Front

Box Back

Dimensions & Weight

The Nobility N005 Pro measures 9cm long, 2cm wide and 1.1cm high. This is the third largest drive we have seen to date. With these dimensions this flash drive obstructs 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. As well as being the third bulkiest drive the Adata Nobility is also one of the heaviest weighing 18 grams.

Build Quality

The Nobility has an aluminium shell encasing it which gives it a good solid feel. The cap can conviniently be clipped onto the back of the drive while the drive is in use but it does not clip particularly tightly on either the front or back, leaving it at risk of loss. Unfortunately, unlike on most flash drives, there is no LED to indicate whether or not the drive is in use.

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 Nobility Pro scored 153/24 MB/s in the sequential read/write tests. This sequential read speed is impressive, bested only by a small handful of drives. The sequential write is far less impressive leaving the Adata nobility trailing towards the bottom of the pack, for a relatively expensive pro drive we expect far better overall 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 Adata are broadly in line with the CrystalDiskMark scores and at 145/24 MB/s come in just under Adatas claimed read/write speeds of 150/25 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 N005 would take 59.15 seconds to create a copy of a large 1GB video file. Given the Nobilitys relatively weak write speed of 24 MB/s this is a very impressive result. Most drives complete this test at half their write speed, the Nobility outperformed on this test.

AS-SSD Copy Benchmark Speed Test

Conclusion

Despite a very strong sequential read speed of 153 MB/s, we are disappointed with this drive. Given its high price point we expect a more symmetrical read/write performance profile. The drive is not alone in this regard, all to often manufacturers focus on headline speeds rather than factors that will impact real world performance. The drive has no indicator light, is priced relatively highly and has below average write speeds. At this time there are far better deals to be had in the market.

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Original Review by:  
Updated 12 years ago.