Kingston HyperX DataTraveler 3.0 [256GB] Review

I was quite proud of my HP 32Gb dual-head USB drive until the nice people at Kingston India decided to send their USB drive to me for a review. Frankly speaking, I had never had an opportunity to lay my hands on a pen-drive that looks like a mini-racing car and costs only #-Link-Snipped-#! I literally had my hands shaking and tears of pride in my eyes, as I held the badass 256GB USB drive that goes by the name of Kingston HyperX 256GB DataTraveler 3.0. This brief review tries to answer whether the product is worth the price and should you buy it even if your last name is 'Ambani'?

The Unboxing:



I'm not sure why Kingston decided to go with average packaging for this product! The packaging looks like the most regular packaging you'd have seen for typical USB drives. Had I been in charge; I'd have put the product inside a box with foam-based protection. The thing to note clearly on the packaging is the 'Speed'. Kingston says that based on their lab-tests, they were able to get Read/Write speeds of 225/135 MB/s (note the big 'B') when connected to USB 3.0 port and about 30 MB/s when connected to USB 2.0 port. It's no wonder that if you're buying this product - you'll need to have USB 3.0 on your computer or laptop. I have written about various types of USBs available in the market in this separate discussion: USB Type-C Explained Along With Its Significance In Modern Electronics.

Testing The HyperX DataTraveler 3.0 (256GB):



I do not want to throw in benchmarks because they are available on several review sites. Frankly speaking, I've never had devices to perform just at the speeds mentioned by the benchmarking software. I just plugged the drive into USB 2.0 port on my mid-2011 iMac and dropped in compressed folders of photographs. The file transfer utility showed transfer speed of about 22 MB/s which is quite good. I did not have any modern hardware around with USB 3.0 to perform tests; but most of the reviewers claim to observe R/W speeds of 200/170 MB/s +. Quite impressive, I must say. If you've got USB 3.0 - you shouldn't won't have to wait for long time to get all your files transferred to this drive - for sure.

Verdict:

If you are out in the market to look for a new pen-drive for your storage needs, look no further. Is the product worth Rs. 17,999? I'm not sure! There are other brands in the market too that sell the similar capacity product for much cheaper. For example, the HP USB 3.0, 256GB pen drive is available for much cheaper at #-Link-Snipped-#. Kingston's been a very well known name in the world of digital storage and the DataTraveler 3.0 is one of the top-line USB drive. The product comes with ReadyBoost support (on Windows; allows increased random read/write access speed) and 5 year warranty. Did I miss out on anything? Do let me know through comments below.