DataTraveler Ultimate USB 3.0 16GB

Packaging & Contents

The DataTraveler Ultimate ships in a small plastic bubble wrap. There are claimed read/write speeds of 100/70 MB/s on the packaging. We like the fact that Kingston 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 drives 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 bottom right of the package.

Box Front

Box Back

Dimensions & Weight

The DataTraveler Ultimate measures 7.3cm long, 2.2cm wide and 1.6cm high. This is a large drive, the second largest we have seen to date. Most of the bulkiness comes from this drives 1.6cm height which is twice the height of several other drives. 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. The drive looks chunky due to its brick like proportions. Weighing in at 20 grams the DataTraveler Ultimate is also one of the heavier drives.

Build Quality

The DataTraveler Ultimate has a very solid feel to it and is larger and heavier than the majority of drives. The cap is difficult to take off which we like. When you do take the cap off you can clip it onto the back of the drive which is also another nice to have because it reduces that chance of cap loss. There is a blue LED light on the inside of the drive which is only visible when the drive is in operation. The keyring hole at the back of the drive is solid and secure.

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 Ultimate scored 117/69 MB/s in the sequential read/write tests. These are very decent scores and leave the DataTraveler Ultimate very close the top of the pack in terms of performance. Even though this drive does not excel in the headline sequential read/write figures it puts in a very solid performance in every other category which means the drive will perform well regardless of the workload its facing. The DataTraveler Ultimates strongest performance was in the 4K random write test where it scored 0.7 MB/s. The majority of drives struggle in this area, and the DataTravelers strength here makes it particularly well suited to tasks that involve lots of small writes.

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 Ultimate are broadly in line with its CrystalDiskMark scores and at 120/60 MB/s come in over Kingstons claimed read/write speeds of 100/70 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 Ultimate would take 25.27 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 Ultimate performed relatively well in this test.

AS-SSD Copy Benchmark Speed Test

Conclusion

The DataTraveler Ultimate excels not because of its headline sequential speeds but because of its respectable and very balanced performance. Regardless of the workload you throw at it, the Kingston will perform well. Physically this drive is much larger than most and it's well constructed. From a value perspective the Kingston falls down a bit because it's one of the more expensive drives.

USBFlashPro
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Original Review by:  
Updated 12 years ago.