I remember when 64MB flash drives were just coming out, they were expensive and considered a luxury item, now not so much, they’re pretty much useless at this point in time. The latest drives on the market today are 64GB in capacity, that’s a huge jump from the 64MB of just a few years ago. On a 64GB USB drive you can fit a little over thirteen and a half DVDs wort of information, that’s a lot on such a small device. I love doing what I do as it allows me to see things evolve more closely than the average person, it’s amazing how far we’ve come in just a short amount of time with technology.

Today for review I’ve got a product from our friends over at Kingston, it’s their DataTraveler 150 64GB USB drive. Only a handful of companies today produce 64GB flash drives, so it’s a treat to be getting one of these for review really, and of course in this review I’m comparing the DataTraveler 150 to another 64GB drive and some other high capacity USB drives.

So read on…

The Kingston DataTraveler 150 64GB USB drive comes in our favorite sealed plastic clamshell style package. Through the front we can plainly see the drive itself, and there’s some basic specs and features listed.

The DataTraveler 150 does not come with a lanyard but it does come with a small nylon cord with clip ring on the end to be able to attach the drive to your keys or wherever.

The drive itself has a plastic housing colored red and black, the DataTraveler log is on the front and the Kingston log is on the back:

The top is the cap, it comes off to reveal the USB connection, the cap can also be attached to the back end for storage.

Specifications:

Kingston DataTraveler 150 64GB USB Flash Drive

Model: DT150/64GB
64GB USB flash drive (2.0) – Red & Black

Affordability meets high capacity
DataTraveler 150 USB Flash drive is big news in mobile storage. With a capacity of 32GB & 64GB, it lets you store more digital files than ever before on one drive.

DataTraveler 150 from Kingston helps budget-conscious users break storage barriers, allowing them to easily store and move files in a 32GB & 64GB device no bigger than a pocketknife. As easy as click and drag, DataTraveler 150 can hold just about any file you can think of — term papers, theses, digital images, spreadsheets or other important documents.

Backed by legendary Kingston reliability plus a five-year warranty and 24/7 tech support, DataTraveler 150 is a reliable, inexpensive solution for carrying digital files with you anywhere you go.

Specs:
-Capacity – 64GB
-Fast – Data transfer rates of up to 20MB/sec. read and 10MB/sec. write2
-Dimensions – 3.06" x 0.9" x 0.47" (77.9 mm x 22 mm x 12.05 mm)
-Operating Temperatures – 32 F to 140 F (0 C to 60 C)
-Storage Temperatures – -4 F to 185 F (-20 C to 85 C)
-Convenient – Pocket-sized for easy transportability
-Simple – Just plug into a USB port
-Practical – Stores cap securely on end of device to prevent loss of cap
-Guaranteed – Five-year warranty

The DataTraveler 150 does have a small blue LED in it near the back end to indicate activity.

Overall the DataTraveler is a nice drive, it seems well made, and it does include the small strap to be attached to a keychain or wherever. I like the idea of being able to attach the cap to the tail end of the drive, but it’s not very secure there, it’s fairly loose and just a slight bump will knock it free, so it’s a good idea, but just not implemented very well.

Now we can move onto the testing, I dug out my Patriot Exporter Magnum 64gb drive for this test, and re-ran the tests of course as I’ve upgraded my system since I reviewed the Exporter back in November, you can read the review HERE if you wish, it will open in new window.

As you can see the Exporter is shorter but quite a bit wider than the DataTraveler is. The Kingston does have the LED indicator on it, while the Exporter does not, some people care about those things. The Exporter is made almost entirely of metal, while the DataTraveler is basically plastic, but it does feel sturdy, and well made.

If you’ve paid attention you’d know that I reviewed a bunch of USB drives lately, so I’ll be comparing the Kingston to those as well, in the charts though I dropped the lower capacity drives, the 4gb and 8gb ones are not there for the comparison, only the 16gb and 32gb ones are.

First up is SiSoft Sandra 2009 SP2 Removable Storage Benchmark, higher scores are better.

As you can see with the Combined Index scores the Kingston doesn’t look too good, let’s take a look at the 256MB Files Test:

Here we can see the DataTraveler excels at handling large files, it’s the best in this test.

Let’s move on to DiskBench, this test gives me actual time in seconds it takes to do certain tasks like Copying and Reading to and from the USB drives. I used a 350MB .AVI Video file for the tests.

Since these are time, lower is better of course, the chart is arranged from best to worst with Copy To or Write time are the reference point of the ordering.

Here we can see the DataTraveler 150 does very well, coming in at a hair over 20 seconds to complete the transfer to the drive. We also see the scores for Copy From and Read From are very good as well.

Here are the Transfer Rates for the above tests, higher score is better, same ordering for this graph:

Now here on this chart we see something that totally surprised me, I was not expecting much from this drive, if you look at the specs you’ll see "Data transfer rates of up to 20MB/sec. read and 10MB/sec. write" but if we look at the rates I got it does quite a bit better than those listed specs, much better in fact.

So we see the Kingston DataTraveler 150 64GB USB drive can hold it’s own when compared to others on the market today.

I did a search of NewEgg for this drive and compared prices to other 64GB drives available now, I found that the Kingston is actually the least expensive, at regular price, with no rebates or anything.

The DataTraveler also has a 5 year warranty on it as well, which is pretty nice, though in 5 years we’ll probably have 1 terabyte flash drives and this thing will be completely obsolete, but it’s still a good warranty length.

Conclusion:
The Kingston DataTraveler 150 64GB USB drive is fast, much faster than it’s specs state it to be actually. Considering this is the least expensive of the 64GB USB drives on the market today, I think it’s the one to get and worth the cost if you need the large capacity.

The DataTraveler 150 is decently made as well, it seems rugged enough to be able to last though our daily lives, and if anything should happen there’s always the 5 year warranty.

The design is nice, I like the look of it, but I don’t like the fact that the cap isn’t secure on the the drive.

Pros:
Well made product
Decent speeds overall
5yr warranty
Least expensive (regular price)of the 64GB drives on the market
Large capacity

Cons:
Cap isn’t secure on back end
Still expensive

Grades:
Overall
Design
Performance