475 Days Later: Kingston HyperX DataTraveler 64GB Revisited

We recently did a review of the Kingston HyperX Predator 512GB USB drive and in order to do the review, we broke out our Kingston HyperX DataTraveler which we reviewed back in 2011 and re-tested it. Since then, I have used that drive like a pocket SSD to transfer large amounts of data between computers and as a backup drive for countless press events and personal engagements. My estimate would be that I’ve written probably about 10TB of data on that drive, easily. For a 64GB drive, that amounts to 157 cycles of the drive’s capacity, but realistically, I’ve probably done more.

So, why are we revisiting this drive 475 days later? Well, because it’s still intact after harsh abuse, for one. And secondly, the drive has suffered almost no performance degradation since we initially got the drive and tested it back in 2011. I was personally shocked by this fact as I expected it to at least lose 5-10% of performance since most USB drives do not necessarily have high quality Flash memory.

What else has happened since this drive came out a year and a half ago? The prices have come down, significantly. A 64GB model can be had for $87 on Amazon, and a 128GB will run you $175 while a 256GB model will run you a steeper $400. However, when you take into account that the 512GB HyperX Predator is $885, these drives sound like much more affordable alternatives. Not to mention, we’ve found that these drives are virtually just as fast for large file transfers, which is the majority of what most people are using these drives for.

As you can see from our CrystalDiskMark scores, almost nothing has changed over the course of time. The resilience of this drive has been utterly shocking and this simply reaffirms the fact that this drive deserves our editor’s choice. However, in light of lower pricing we have decided to award this drive with our Value Award for Prosumer for reaching a very affordable price and still being incredibly fast.

Original Author: Anshel Sag