Kingston DataTraveler Max 1TB Flash Drive Review

Kingston's DataTraveler range of USB flash drives is pretty extensive with durable designs, metal-cased drives and – for the security-minded – several different styles of encrypted drives. The latest addition to the line-up is the DataTraveler Max, a high-performance drive using a USB 3.2 Gen2 interface that comes in three capacities; 256GB, 512GB and the 1TB (the version we are looking at here).

At the heart of the DataTraveler Max is a Silicon Motion SM2320 controller. The 4-channel chip uses a USB 3.2 Gen 2 interface so doing away with the need for a bridging chip, so when Kingston say a high-performance pen drive, they are not kidding as the official maximum transfer rates for the drive are up to 1,000MB/s for reads and 900MB/s for writes.

The drive topped the advertised 1,000MB/s for reads in ATTO and CrystalDiskMark benchmarks (1,060MB/s and 1,058MB/s respectively). Using the AS SSD benchmark the best figure we saw for reads was 974MB/s, just under the official maximum, while the 938MB/s write score in AS SSD was a little higher than the official rating. The best write figure we saw was 1,005MB/s, (105MB/s faster than the official rating) in both ATTO and CrystalDiskMark.

It did get very warm while we were testing it, regularly topping 65°C and sometimes getting as high as 70°C – the plastic case doesn't do the drive any favours in this regard. Although the temperatures were high we didn't observe a drop in performance in the heavy workloads, such as transferring big data files to and from an NVMe SSD.

The 1TB Kingston DataTraveler Max is priced available from Amazon UK for £132.84 HERE.

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Pros

• Neat design.
• Performance.
• Capacity.
• Five-year warranty.

Cons

• Lack of encryption.
• The case isn't rugged.
• No thermal pads for internal components.
• Pricey.

KitGuru says: If you are looking for a large-capacity flash drive that is blisteringly fast, then Kingston's DataTraveler Max should fit the bill nicely – but talking of bills, it doesn't come cheap.

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