Kingston DataTraveler Max 256GB USB-C Flash Drive with USB 3.2 Gen 2 Performance, Black

Great "little" stick drive. It's actually, a few inches long, but it is very fast, installed with no issue, and has a lot of space on it. My wife has a phone with no micro slot and only 128GB of total drive space, so videos and pictures at high resolution fill it quickly. This stick allows you to clear out your phone's photos and vids in a matter of minutes, but still have them for editing and use later.

Your mileage may vary, but initial testing has gone very well in my niche application. I have a 2017 MacBook Pro (i5-7267U/8 GB RAM, four Thunderbolt 3 ports only) running Windows 10, and I am out of drive space, but I need to install some large software to take on the road with me. I was going to buy an external m.2 chassis, but I thought I would give this drive a try, instead, since it is about 1/3rd the price of what it would cost me to buy an external m.2 chassis, m.2 drive, and Thunderbolt 3 cable. It's also a small fraction of the size and weight.The software in question is already running on my 2022 desktop PC (Z690/i5-12600K/32 GB DDR5/Samsung 980PRO m.2 boot drive, Windows 11) from a 10 years old Kingston 240 GB SSDNow V300 SATA SSD that was pulled from my old Dell laptop. I ran CrystalDiskMark on the old drive in the new PC, because the software runs fine at that speed.The Kingston DataTraveler Max 256 GB is giving me about twice the speed in sequential read/write and about half the speed in random read/write. The SATA drive is NTFS, and the USB drive is exFAT, but that probably doesn't matter. As you can see from the CrystalDiskMark screenshot, I am pulling the advertised 1000 MB/s even from this relatively ancient and obsolete MacBook Pro, so it definitely works fine on a Thunderbolt 3 port using Apple's Boot Camp Windows drivers. I did not include a screenshot of the old drive's results, so as not to confuse people.This is probably going to be fine, but I am installing the software right now to see how well it actually runs on the MacBook Pro, running from the USB-C stick. It will take hours to install, since the developer specifies 140 GB of drive space, and my WiFi is only pulling about 100 Mb/s. If the software doesn't run very well, it will likely be more to do with the difference in memory, CPU, and GPU between the two machines, not the drive speed.Although Kingston is not the only brand of memory and storage I trust, I have relied on Kingston products for decades, and this product gives me every reason to extend that trust. The DDR5 RAM in my desktop PC is also Kingston.Update: After 3 weeks on the road, I can say this drive performed flawlessly in my application.

I bought an SSK 512GB 1000MB/s and a Kingston USB-C 256GB. The SSK is a little faster and cooler (43°C vs 66°C) after Crystal DiskMark test but three times heavier than the Kingston(33g vs 12g). The Kingston has a 2mm shorter USB-C end than the SSK and a body that is too wide, causing it to collide with another USB-C port next to it, making it impossible to charge through USB-C simultaneously.

Decided to buy a couple of brand new USB drives that were full-on USB3.2 devices to get the fastest speeds on my brand new PC with USB3.2 support. The Kingston DataTraveler Max drives were well-reviewed and reasonably inexpensive so I bought a couple, one with a USB-C and one with a USB-A connector.They are indeed faster than any other drive I have so that's good. Of course there's bottlenecks and restrictions which will reduce the overall speeds somewhat. In my case, I do not get 900MB/s speeds writing to the drives. Instead I'm getting closer to 520MB/s which is nowhere near the claimed speed nor that on various review sites but way faster than my other USB3.0 drives. So these are doing the job reasonably well.Only one complaint - these are ridiculously large. I'm not sure why they chose a plastic sleeve that was 3.25 inches long. I'm willing to bet the internal memory chips are on a very small circuit board like every other drive. So that's an odd choice on Kingston's part.

This is a garbage USB drive. Does it write 900 MB/s? Yes, but only in synthetic benchmarking apps like CrystalDiskMark. When transferring actual files in Windows, you'll get 450 MB/s...but for only about 5 to 20 seconds. Then the drive will start to get hot and throttle to as low as 20 MB/s. Then it will shoot back up to 150 MB/s for a few seconds before throttling back down again. Repeat. I tested this on a laptop with Thunderbolt 3 ports.Also, the USB C connector doesn't actually retract. The cover slides over it but still exposes the port from underneath. That's a cheap solution.The drive is a bit wide and will unnecessarily cover up a nearby USB slot. And having a slightly crooked USB connector doesn't help. See photos. I may have to exchange this or just return it. Disappointing effort by Kingston, a reputable manufacturer.

I got this because my OWC Envoy was faulty. This drive is decent, i may have expected more from it than it was capable of. The speed is decent, but it also slows down for no reason. It doesn't always work, not sure why. Formatted it and it works more consistently now.

Great value for the money very easy to use, small for amount of data it holds, it's very durable. fast write speed and fits perfect