The fastest top 5 USB flash you should buy

Internet speed is faster than ever. There are a lot of online memory available for free or cheap. But they can't beat the speed you get from the flash drive. Plus, when you have to transfer a few gigabytes of data, there's no reason to clog your bandwidth, right?

USB flash has many shapes and sizes. But sometimes, all you need is fast speed - and if so, these are the best things you can buy at this time.

A new type of USB

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Technology has the habit of shrinking the size of everything year by year. And that's happening for SSDs at an amazing speed. Now you can buy SSDs of the same size as a USB flash drive.

SSDs differ from the memory that most USB flash drives use. Although both are basic flash memory, the quality of materials created and their structure are very different. Usually, an SSD has a much higher quality. Without going into the technical details, here are some notable differences:

An SSD will have a higher price than a flash drive.

The SSD has a better Fault tolerance. Fault tolerance is the ability to keep data safe when you remove the drive without clicking 'Safely Remove' or 'Eject' on the screen.

SSD uses better quality flash memory, ensuring more write cycles than flash memory. Simply put, SSD will have a longer life.

Choose between regular SSD and USB

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Choosing between SSD and regular USB is not an easy thing. From the same manufacturer, an SSD is faster and better than conventional flash drives. But some flash drives are as good as low-quality SSDs. In addition, SSD USB drives are much more expensive than regular flash drives.

As a general rule, here's what you need to keep in mind:

1. Buy an SSD if you regularly use the drive and need fast speeds to transfer data.
2. Buy regular USB 3.0 flash if you want to save money and need to read data from more drives to write data to it. In essence, USB flash is not slow. It is only slower than an SSD. Chances are, you'll still be fine with this speed.

Suppose you need a regular flash drive, not an SSD, here are the fastest USB 3.0 or USB 3.1 flash drives for you to choose from.

Fastest recording speed: SanDisk Extreme Pro SDCZ880

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1. Price: $ 60 (VND 1,400,000)
2. Capacity: 128GB, 256GB
3. Advertised reading speed: 420MB / s
4. UserBenchmark: 297MB / s read speed
5. Speed ​​recorded ads: 380 MB / s
6. Recording speed of UserBenchmark: 262MB / s
7. Who should buy: Anyone looking for the "fastest flash drive" overall.

SanDisk Extreme Pro speeds up reading and writing. Actually, UserBenchmark ranks its write speed as the fastest. Behind it are Lexar Jumpdrive P10 and Kingston HyperX Savage, 30MB / s slower or more.

Such a fast recording speed is great for copying large files or editing videos, for example. Because SanDisk Extreme Pro has two relatively high capacity storage options (128GB and 256GB), this is the best USB for those needs.

Also, if you often lose the lid of a USB flash, you'll love this. SanDisk Extreme Pro has a sliding mechanism to turn on the USB connector. There is no lid like usual so you don't need to worry about losing something anymore!

The fastest reading speed: Corsair Flash Voyager GTX

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1. Price: $ 68 (VND 1,587,000)
2. Capacity: 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, 1TB
3. Advertising speed read: 440MB / s
4. Read speed of UserBenchmark: 380MB / s
5. Advertised write speed: 440MB / s
6. UserBenchmark recording speed: 168MB / s
7. Who should buy it: People who work with files directly from a flash drive.

The read and write speed of the SanDisk Extreme Pro is impressive enough to make it the fastest USB overall, but the Corsair Flash Voyager GTX has a higher read speed. If you work with files directly from the flash drive (without copying them to your hard drive), this might be a better option for you.

If your laptop doesn't have enough free storage, then you won't be able to copy anything. Flash drives are what you need to work and the Voyager GTX's 380MB / s speed is absurd. Plus it has storage options up to 1TB, so you've got everything you need here.

The fastest low-cost flash drive to install the operating system: Kingston DataTraveler 100 G3

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1. Price: $ 47 (VND 1,097,000)
2. Capacity: 32GB x 5 drives
3. Advertised reading speed: 100MB / s
4. Read speed of UserBenchmark: 134MB / s
5. Speed ​​recorded ads: Not applicable
6. UserBenchmark write speed: 52.2MB / s
7. Who should buy it: Those who want cheap flash drives to create installers capable of booting operating systems.

You don't always need a USB flash with lots of memory. Sometimes, you need very little storage, but it must be fast and cheap. Kingston DataTraveler 100 G3 32GB is a great option for this need.

So it has 5 separate flash drives, and you can turn each drive into a USB capable of booting from an ISO file. At a cost of about $ 10 per drive (about VND 230,000), you won't even bother to borrow someone from one of these drives and never return it.

Make sure you buy the 32GB version, not the 16GB model. The speed of the 16GB model is much lower and therefore, it is not worth the price.

The fastest flash drive to run Linux portable: Corsair Flash Voyager GTX

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1. Price: $ 68 (VND 1,587,000)
2. Capacity: 128GB
3. UserBenchmark 4k reading speed: 24.4MB / s
4. UserBenchmark's 4k write speed: 49.8MB / s
5. Who should buy it: People running a Linux operating system constantly from a Flash drive.

In case you don't know, you can run Linux from USB. But the drive you use plays an important role in this activity. Especially for people who run Linux regularly, the Corsair Flash Voyager GTX 128GB version is worth buying.

There is a specific reason behind this. When you are running an operating system from a flash drive, many small files are being read, written and recorded continuously. This speed, called 4k recording and 4k reading. It is more important than the fastest sequential speed.

Buying a 256GB flash drive to run an operating system is not worth it.

And when considering cost, you don't want to spend too much money on something like that, right?

All of this makes the Corsair Flash Voyager GTX 128GB version the fastest USB flash, best balanced between cost and use, dedicated to running Linux portable. If you want the fastest speed, use the 256GB version, to speed up reading and writing to 4k. But don't be higher than 256GB because the speed will decrease in later versions.

Note: In fact, UserBenchmarks ranks Mushkin Ventura Ultra in a higher position. But more rigorous testing showed Mushkin's speed was inconsistent under different conditions, and some users reported much slower speeds than UserBenchmark's statistics.

The fastest Type C USB flash drive: Samsung T5

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1. Price: $ 110 (VND 2,567,000)
2. Capacity: 512GB
3. Advertising speed read: 540MB / s
4. Benchmark test speed of reading: 500 - 510MB / s
5. Advertised write speed: 540MB / s
6. UserBenchmark: 470 - 490MB / s write speed
7. Who should buy: People with laptops have only USB Type C ports.

Some laptops, especially the best ultrabooks, have switched to using just one USB Type C port instead of the traditional USB Type A port on most flash drives. That means you need a fast flash drive with USB Type C port.

Unfortunately, users' choices are terribly limited. USB Flash drive with Type C is not fast. In fact, it is better to buy one of the other flash drives mentioned in this article and add a USB Type A adapter to USB Type C.

Samsung T5 has fast read and write speeds, especially on the new Dell XPS 13 and MacBook. The 512GB version is also worth the money.

It is thicker and not as convenient as a flash drive. But it comes with a USB Type A and Type C converter, if you don't want to buy an additional converter, this is the option to consider.

The list of super fast flash drives above will meet the needs of anyone who wants a USB with 64GB, 128GB or 256GB capacity. Sure, there are 512GB and 1TB options available. But often, ordinary users won't need to buy those things.

For large capacities, especially larger than 512GB, you should consider some of the best portable hard drives instead. They have much better storage capacity and price. Moreover, the speed can actually increase when you use connected devices like Thunderbolt.

Wish you choose the product you like!

See more:

1. 9 best USB currently according to each criterion
2. Top 10 best Wi-Fi USB
3. 7 best external hard drives
4. Difference between Flash drive and Pen drive