If you’re thinking about getting a cheap USB flash drive, hear me out. Instead of getting a cheap but very sluggish flash drive, consider buying a USB SSD that looks like a regular thumb drive but is way faster and only slightly more expensive.
SSD thumb drives can be faster than some external SSDs
Let’s get one thing straight right out the gate. Every USB flash drive is technically an SSD because it uses NAND memory chips, which are also found in SSDs. But the transfer speeds and the quality of the NAND chips used in most USB flash drives are generally bottom of the barrel.
Your average thumb drive uses NAND chips that weren’t deemed good enough for NVMe or even SATA SSDs, usually has a teeny tiny write cache that prevents it from maintaining high transfer speeds when moving large files, and has lower endurance than any SSD.
To put it in numbers, most USB thumb drives top out at around 150MB/s, with high-end models delivering up to 400MB/s. Since they usually have a very small write cache, write speeds drop below 100 MB/s when transferring large files exceeding a few gigabytes. They also have very poor write endurance, which isn’t surprising considering they pack the slowest and cheapest NAND available.
This is where SSD thumb drives—also known as USB SSDs, SSD sticks, and Solid State Flash Drives (SSFDs)—come in. Unlike regular thumb drives, they use higher-quality NAND chips, allowing them to achieve max transfer speeds of up to 10Gb/s (~1000 MB/s).
They are capable of retaining high write speeds when transferring large files because they come with much larger write caches, with some models even packing a DRAM cache. They’re also based on the NVMe protocol, used in the fastest SSDs around.
For example, the SK Hynix Tube T31 hides a proper M.2 NVMe SSD with a DRAM cache inside its body and delivers an average write speed of around 600MB/s when transferring a massive, 450GB file. It slows down to around 240MB/s only after around 95% of the file has been written, indicating that its write cache is larger than 400GB.
That is more than impressive for something that’s the same size as a regular USB flash drive and faster than any SATA SSD—and even many 10GB/s portable SSDs.
They’re not much pricier than regular USB flash drives
The best thing about USB SSDs is that they aren’t that much pricier than regular thumb drives.
For example, let’s take a look at the Transcend ESD310 USB SSD, which boasts transfer speeds of up to 10GB/s. The 128GB version costs only $27, which is less than $10 more than what Samsung asks for its high-end BAR Plus USB flash drive. The 256GB version of the Transcend ESD310 costs $40, which is only $11 more expensive than the 256GB version of the Samsung BAR Plus.
Then you’ve got the PNY PRO Elite V3, another pretty solid USB SSD that’s even more affordable. The 128GB version costs only $25, while you can buy the 256GB version for less than $40.
In other words, by spending only a dozen more bucks or so, you can get a USB flash drive that matches many budget portable SSDs, with the added benefit of being able to carry it on a keychain and transfer large files in an instant whenever you need to.
7/10
- Capacity
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256GB, 512GB, 1TB, 2TB
- Speed
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1000MB/s read | 800MB/s write
This massive 2TB USB-C drive is built for speed and portability.
Getting a USB SSD might be a better option than buying a portable SSD
A high-end USB SSD might be a better buy than a portable SSD. High-end USB SSDs cost the same or less than 10GB/s portable SSDs while taking much less space and offering similar transfer speeds when moving large files.
A case in point is the TEAMGROUP X2 MAX. The 1TB version costs $101, about the same price as a regular 10GB/s portable SSD. But with the X2 MAX, you’re getting the benefit of it being as tiny as a regular USB thumb drive, only way faster.
So why would anyone get a regular portable SSD that has a notably larger footprint and requires a cable, when you can have a keychain-friendly thumb drive boasting the same transfer speeds?
The aforementioned SK Hynix Tube T31 even comes with DRAM and boasts 10GB/s speeds, something most portable SSDs lack, while costing $70 for 512GB of storage. This is actually less than what Samsung asks for its 400MB/s BAR Plus thumb drive, which costs $84 for the 512GB model.
With the advent of USB SSDs, regular thumb drives don’t make sense anymore. Even the slowest USB SSDs boast speeds of around 600MB/s, while being only a touch more expensive than cheap USB flash drives that can rarely go north of ~150MB/s. The only reason for getting a regular USB flash drive is if you need 64GB of storage or less, since USB SSDs usually start at 128GB.
While USB SSDs may take a few years to become mainstream, especially now that we’re in the middle of the RAM-pocalypse that affects NAND-based storage as well, I reckon it’s only a matter of time before they make plain, old thumb drives obsolete.
