Mach Xtreme MX-GX USB 3.0 16GB Flash Drive Review

Andy Ruffell / 13 years ago

Final ThoughtsI really want to break this conclusion up into two parts; the first will involve the general styling and looks whilst the second will talk about the performance as some elements have their good and bad points and this really needs highlighting just in case you missed anything.

The look of the drive is fantastic in so many words as it features a slim, sleek design and is a slightly different shape to most flash drives on the market, being slightly slimmer but slightly longer as opposed to the short and dumpy look of competitor products. It has an activity LED to notify you that it has been inserted into your computer, but with a dark blue/black casing, I’m still trying to understand why a green LED was used instead of blue. The protective cap would have been better if it could have been fitted to the end of the drive when in use, but instead it will no doubt sit aimlessly on a desk until it gets knocked onto the floor and lost forever.

Another nice feature is the ability to tie a lanyard of similar cabled device to ensure the drive doesn’t get lost in a hurry. You could even end up tying it to your keys if that’s your preference.

So let’s get down to the nitty gritty and talk performance. Firstly the drive claims from the very beginning that it has the USB 3.0 interface for ultra-speed data transfer yet that’s only technically half correct. Whilst the drive offered up some fantastic speeds in our tests, it seems that was only for read and not for write. In some tests it seems that USB 2.0 may even surpass the speeds obtained for the write tests.

Other drives that we’ve tested on the market claim to give USB 3.0 speeds and they deliver in both read and write speeds, yet this drive seems to be focussed more on reading as opposed to writing which is a shame for users who rely on this functionality when time is of the essence.

If you want a stylish device that is fast and reading data then this is the drive for you, but if you’re after something is equally as fast at writing data, then you’re certainly barking up the wrong tree I’m afraid.
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