Kingston DataTraveler Ultimate 3.0 32GB

For those who transfer files a lot and can’t stand waiting for those transfers to finish, a drive like Kingston’s DataTraveler Ultimate 3.0 is perfect. It takes great advantage of the USB 3.0 bus but doesn’t cost an arm and a leg like some other models. At the performance we did see here, Kingston’s drive is about as fast as a mechanical mobile hard drive in the read department (~86MB/s), and even faster in the write (~66MB/s).

The DataTraveler Ultimate 3.0 doesn’t offer much in the way of frills, but for most people, that’s not going to matter. If you care a lot about security, this drive might not be for you, unless you want to take the DIY route which isn’t all too difficult. There are no security partitions here, just pure unadulterated free space to be taken advantage of.

Price-wise, Kingston’s drive isn’t exactly economical, at around $100 USD for the 32GB version. By comparison, an OCZ ATV 32GB USB 2.0 drive, which it about as fast as the USB 2.0 bus would allow, retails for around $60. There are even other USB 3.0 offerings that are a bit cheaper for the same density, but even still, Kingston has a good thing going with this product.

Being that it’s a USB 3.0 drive, and offers at least 2.5x the performance of a standard USB 2.0 drive, the DataTraveler Ultimate 3.0 is a no-brainer if you are in need of a high-density thumb drive and happen to have a computer with USB 3.0 support. The performance is unparalleled compared to USB 2.0 counterparts, not only with the raw throughput, but with IOPS as well. That will make a huge difference when copying over folders and boatloads of smaller files.

The drive is also rather attractive, if that’s something you care about. Even more important, it’s durable on all sides, and the cap actually stays in place (it’d fall off only if something actually grabbed the cover well enough and pulled on it… it might come off you haul it out of tight pockets, but that’s common of any thumb drive), and I had to quite forceably squeeze the center of the drive in order to hear a creak.

Overall, this is a great product from Kingston, and I liked it even more than I thought it would. It offers just what it promises, and more, and for that, it deserves our Editor’s Choice award.

Kingston’s DataTraveler Ultimate 3.0 32GB

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