Kingston DataTraveler Max 256GB USB-C Flash Drive with USB 3.2 Gen 2 Performance, Black

Your mileage may vary, but initial testing has gone very well in my niche application. I have a 2017 MacBook Pro (i5-7267U/8 GB RAM, four Thunderbolt 3 ports only) running Windows 10, and I am out of drive space, but I need to install some large software to take on the road with me. I was going to buy an external m.2 chassis, but I thought I would give this drive a try, instead, since it is about 1/3rd the price of what it would cost me to buy an external m.2 chassis, m.2 drive, and Thunderbolt 3 cable. It's also a small fraction of the size and weight.The software in question is already running on my 2022 desktop PC (Z690/i5-12600K/32 GB DDR5/Samsung 980PRO m.2 boot drive, Windows 11) from a 10 years old Kingston 240 GB SSDNow V300 SATA SSD that was pulled from my old Dell laptop. I ran CrystalDiskMark on the old drive in the new PC, because the software runs fine at that speed.The Kingston DataTraveler Max 256 GB is giving me about twice the speed in sequential read/write and about half the speed in random read/write. The SATA drive is NTFS, and the USB drive is exFAT, but that probably doesn't matter. As you can see from the CrystalDiskMark screenshot, I am pulling the advertised 1000 MB/s even from this relatively ancient and obsolete MacBook Pro, so it definitely works fine on a Thunderbolt 3 port using Apple's Boot Camp Windows drivers. I did not include a screenshot of the old drive's results, so as not to confuse people.This is probably going to be fine, but I am installing the software right now to see how well it actually runs on the MacBook Pro, running from the USB-C stick. It will take hours to install, since the developer specifies 140 GB of drive space, and my WiFi is only pulling about 100 Mb/s. If the software doesn't run very well, it will likely be more to do with the difference in memory, CPU, and GPU between the two machines, not the drive speed.Although Kingston is not the only brand of memory and storage I trust, I have relied on Kingston products for decades, and this product gives me every reason to extend that trust. The DDR5 RAM in my desktop PC is also Kingston.Update: After 3 weeks on the road, I can say this drive performed flawlessly in my application.

Great "little" stick drive. It's actually, a few inches long, but it is very fast, installed with no issue, and has a lot of space on it. My wife has a phone with no micro slot and only 128GB of total drive space, so videos and pictures at high resolution fill it quickly. This stick allows you to clear out your phone's photos and vids in a matter of minutes, but still have them for editing and use later.

It's fast alright, and bit (one terabyte/1TB model). It's a VERY LONG USB drive though, and the same width and height as a USB-A drive. It puts a lot of leverage on that little USB-C plug, so if you bump it it feels like it'll bend or break. The plastic is cheap feeling and the fit around the internal board isn't very tight so it flops around a bit. Overall feels WAY cheaper than it is. I probably wouldn't ever buy this brand again, because I want things to last when I spend good money on them. This thing is not long for the world, especially if you have a thin laptop and it spends a lot of time millimeters from the surface of your desk... one wring set-down or pick-up and it feels like it'll be toast.

Keeps up with my Samsung and Crucial external SSDs with similar speeds. Really impressed with it and wish I had purchased the larger size. I connect them all via a powered Thunderbolt hub to my laptop.

Decided to buy a couple of brand new USB drives that were full-on USB3.2 devices to get the fastest speeds on my brand new PC with USB3.2 support. The Kingston DataTraveler Max drives were well-reviewed and reasonably inexpensive so I bought a couple, one with a USB-C and one with a USB-A connector.They are indeed faster than any other drive I have so that's good. Of course there's bottlenecks and restrictions which will reduce the overall speeds somewhat. In my case, I do not get 900MB/s speeds writing to the drives. Instead I'm getting closer to 520MB/s which is nowhere near the claimed speed nor that on various review sites but way faster than my other USB3.0 drives. So these are doing the job reasonably well.Only one complaint - these are ridiculously large. I'm not sure why they chose a plastic sleeve that was 3.25 inches long. I'm willing to bet the internal memory chips are on a very small circuit board like every other drive. So that's an odd choice on Kingston's part.

I got this because my OWC Envoy was faulty. This drive is decent, i may have expected more from it than it was capable of. The speed is decent, but it also slows down for no reason. It doesn't always work, not sure why. Formatted it and it works more consistently now.

Used this flash drive for less than a month to back up photos and music for Apple devices (non-expandable media for the lose). Just the other day it spontaneously disconnected while I was using it and now it's not detectable by any of my devices. And of course, the return window closed YESTERDAY. So I have no recourse but to try to go through Kingston's Warranty service to maybe get some of my money back.Why did I wait a few days before checking the return window? Because I liked this thing. It was really fast and had lots of space, and I thought I'd be able to use it for years. Hoping I can get something back from this, but I'm probably out the $90+ dollars I spent.