SanDisk Extreme PRO 128GB USB3.0 Flash Drive Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

Considering the massive performance gain that is to be had on the write front of the Extreme PRO, a rock bottom price is not something that I would expect, priced at 99p or $1.17 per GB of storage though, the Extreme PRO is actually not that bad in terms of price. At this moment in time Amazon are the only outlet through which you can buy the drive, however with a US price of $150 and a UK price of £118, the drive carries a competitive price tag and once we see it branch out to all the other usual gang of retailers, I expect we will see similar prices throughout.

Overview

Up to this point, the battle between high performing flash drives has always been on the read side of things and whilst this all and well, getting the data on to the drive in the first instance is just as important. Although every high performing drive has had a strong sequential write speed to offer, 4k performance has been a consistent stumbling block for nearly all of these drives. The Extreme PRO however does not fall foul to this problem. By offering write performance that we would expect to see from a SATA II SSD, the Extreme PRO opens up the gap between high performing and class leading drives by a long shot.

Getting a balance in the performance is one thing, but also getting a drive to look and suit the part is also key. Whilst this is not a small drive like the MX-LX 128GB drive that I looked at not too long ago, it’s long, slim body does not suffer the downside of blocking neighbouring USB ports like we see from drives such as the Magnum from Patriot. That said though the body is long enough and when using the drive in a laptop for example it would be sensible to have a short USB3.0 extension cable included preventing damage to the drive if it were to be knocked in any way. I won’t go into the laws of physics and turning forces, but a longer drive is more prone to being knocked as I’m sure you’ll understand so do be careful when you have it connected.

So where does this leave us in a decision of whether or not to buy. Yes this drive is going to cost you in the region of $150 / £120 to buy, but with its 128GB capacity, secure encryption software and record-breaking levels of performance, you could certainly use this as a boot drive for a small system or use for copying data from one system to another with ease. Either way its an epic drive and even though it’s not the top drive in read speed as everyone judges, in every other performance metric that I have it is simply in a class of its own.

Pros

• Stylish design
• Limited lifetime warranty
• Superior write performance
• Competitive price tag for this class of drive
• Encryption software included on the drive

Cons

• 128GB capacity only at this moment in time
• A short USB3.0 cable would be handy to have included

“The Extreme PRO is not just any flash drive with a flashy name attached to it in order to drive sales whilst offering average levels of performance. With staggering write performance figures compared to nearly every other high-capacity USB3.0 drive on the market it has every right to be dubbed an Extreme class drive.”

Thank you to Text 100 for providing this review sample.