Patriot SuperSonic Magnum 256GB USB 3.0 Drive Review

Rating: 8.5.

As the demand for storage space increases we have seen a handful of manufacturers releasing larger and faster USB 3.0 pen drives. In January we reviewed the Kingston DataTraveler HyperX Predator 512GB drive which broke new ground for performance. The only downside was the asking price, a staggering £650 inc vat. Today we are looking at the latest SuperSonic Magnum 256GB USB 3.0 pen drive, priced at a more palatable £250 inc vat.

The Patriot SuperSonic Magnum will be released in 64GB, 128GB and 256GB capacities. We are testing the largest 256GB version today which is also the fastest.

Patriot rate performance at 250 MB/s read and 160 MB/s write for the 256GB drive. This drops to 200 MB/s read and 120 MB/s write for the 64GB and 128GB versions. All of them carry a 5 year warranty.

Features:

• USB 3.0 compliant.
• 8-Channel technology for fast read/write performance.
• 64GB and 128GB – U p to 200MB/s read.
• 256GB – U p to 250MB/s read.
• 64GB and 128GB – Up to 120MB/s write.
• 256GB – U p to 160MB/s write.
• Backwards compatible with USB 2.0.
• Aluminum housing for shock resistance up t o 15G.
• Compatible with Windows® 8, Windows® 7, Windows Vista®, Windows XP®, Windows 2000®, Windows® ME, Linux 2.4 and later,
  Mac® OS9, X.

The Patriot SuperSonic Magnum ships in a clear plastic blister pack with the product on full view from the front. The capacity is listed underneath the USB 3.0 logo. The packaging sadly can't compete with the amazing heavy duty aluminum box that ships with the Kingston DataTraveler Predator 512GB unit.

The rear of the package highlights the ‘large capacity' and ‘maximum performance' characteristics of the drive. There is also mention of the 8 channel technology which helps deliver the high performance levels.

The Patriot SuperSonic Magnum ships inside a durable aluminum enclosure which the company claim offers shock resistance up to 15Gs. The drive measures .91cm (D) x 2.69cm (W) x 7.18cm (H) and weighs 21.9gm. It can easily fit into a coat or shirt pocket and isn't that small that it would be easily lost.

The USB port cover can be removed and then attached to the rear of the drive so it won't get lost.

Above, a few comparisons with the Kingston DT Ultimate 64GB pen drive, and an mSATA drive fitted into a 2.5 inch SATA adapter. The Patriot SuperSonic Magnum 256GB is vertically thin, but rather broad.

The only way to get a look inside the Magnum drive would be to cut open and damage the enclosure and this unit had to be returned to Patriot.

The image above shows the Patriot SuperSonic Magnum 256GB drive installed in a USB 3.0 slot on a 17 inch Dell Precision laptop. You can see it was a tight fit next to the KingstonDT Ultimate drive and anything larger in an adjacent slot would cause fitting issues.

When the drive is formatted in Windows, there is 235GB free for storage.

To test the drive performance today we are using an Intel Core i7 990X Extreme Edition system.

Processor: Core i7 990X Extreme Edition @ 4.8ghz.
Cooling: Corsair H100 Liquid Cooler.
Motherboard: Asus Rampage III Black Edition.
Chassis: Lian Li X2000F.
Power Supply: ADATA 1200W.
Memory: (6 x 4GB) 24GB Visiontek DDR3 1866mhz (10-10-10-24).
Storage: Memoright 240GB SSD & 2TB Samsung storage drive.
Monitors: Dell U3011.
Operating System: Windows 7 64 bit

Comparison Products:
Kingston DataTraveler HyperX Predator 512GB
Kingston DataTraveler HyperX 3.0 64GB
ADATA Nobility N005 Pro 64GB Flash Drive.
Kingston 64GB DT Ultimate Drive.
1TB USB 3.0 Toshiba HDD.

We perform each test multiple times to ensure that abnormalities don’t enter into the test results.

First we copied a folder containing 12 MKV files, totaling 8GB in size. We copied them to and from each of the drives via an internal SATA 6Gbps based Memoright 240GB SSD.

We recorded great results from the Patriot SuperSonic Magnum 256GB drive, just in behind the Kingston DataTraveler HyperX Predator 512GB at the top of the charts. These are actually higher than the official Patriot claims.

Next we copied a folder with many mixed files, ranging in size from simple text based Word documents to several 100 MB video files. The folder size is 1GB. We record the average time taken then work out the speeds of the drives. Again we copy via an internal sata based Memoright 240GB SSD.

With a mixed sized folder, performance drops noticeably however the results are still excellent and the drive maintains its position right behind the Kingston HyperX Predator 512GB at the top of the chart.

The next stage is to analyse the performance of the drives with some of the best software available online.

Crystalmark is a useful benchmark to measure theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSD’s. We are using V3.0 x64.

We tested the Patriot SuperSonic Magnum 256GB with both compressible and incompressible data and the results are positive. We recorded around 265 MB/s sequential read and around 173 MB/s sequential write from the drive. which is greater than the Patriot ‘official' claims. The results were almost identical when we enabled the ‘0x00 compressible' data mode.

Due to the nature of this kind of flash, and via the USB 3.0 interface, 4k and 4k QD32 performance is substantially worse than from a native SSD drive across a SATA connector.

Above, a few comparison results for reference. The Kingston DataTraveler HyperX Predator 512GB was the only drive to outperform the Patriot SuperSonic Magnum 256GB.

The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.

Results from the ATTO Disk Benchmark weren't quite as impressive, a similar result we experienced with the Kingston DataTraveler HyperX Predator 512GB drive. The drive peaked at over 250MB/s read but only 75 MB/s write.

A few comparisons from other performance drives we have evaluated in recent months.

The Patriot SuperSonic Magnum 256GB is an expensive pen drive which offers not only huge storage capacity but incredible performance levels via the USB 3.0 connector. We recorded speeds over 260MB/s when reading data and over 170 MB/s when writing data. For a flash based pen drive this is almost class leading.

We say ‘almost' because incredibly, the Patriot SuperSonic Magnum 256GB is the second fastest pen drive we have tested this year, falling behind the Kingston DataTraveler HyperX Predator 512GB. When we first tested the Kingston Predator 512GB we were inundated with emails and comments on Facebook from people who couldn't believe the price point, a bank breaking £700 inc vat (It has since dropped to £650 inc vat). Enough to give your bank manager a heart attack. There was no doubt it was the new performance king, but the target audience who could afford one was undoubtedly miniscule.

The Patriot SuperSonic Magnum 256GB retails for around £260 in the United Kingdom, with the cheapest deal being offered by Amazon @ £247.68 inc vat. It certainly won't be a ‘casual' purchasing decision either, but the price point will be more palatable to a much wider audience who need a large, reliable, fast, offline storage device which can be comfortably kept inside a coat pocket, for instance when transferring a large number of files between work and home computers.

If you need a fast, well constructed pen drive to back up a massive amount of important data, then the Patriot SuperSonic Magnum offers lightning speeds inside a very small form factor.

Pros:

• Tough aluminum chassis design.
• small.
• lightning quick.
• huge storage levels.
• breaks the portable £1 to 1GB price point.
• ideal for a business user who doesn't want to wait forever for large, offline backups.
• our results are better than Patriot's official claims.

Cons:

• The 64gb or 128GB versions may make more sense for most people.

Kitguru says: A well rounded, lightning quick portable drive, which breaks the high capacity 1GB to £1 barrier.

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