INTRODUCTION

   USB Flash Drives have been around for almost 13 years now and according to some people they were the stepping stone on which solid state drives were eventually developed for consumer use (although SSDs in general have been around for much longer). Naturally however since solid state drives either use SATA or PCIex connectivity they are quite faster than even the fastest USB flash drive and although in "theory" the specifications of USB 3.0 come really close in the end we may never see USB 3.0 based flash drives with speeds exceeding 350-400MB/s. Still it's very rare to come across a USB 3.0 based flash drive with speeds exceeding the 200MB/s mark and to my knowledge there are just a handful of drive models currently in the market that can achieve that number mostly manufactured from Kingston and Corsair. Well it seems that Mach Xtreme (MX-Technology) is also ready to jump on the same wagon with their latest MX-FX USB 3.0 flash drives.

   Mach Xtreme Technology is a newly established Company since January 2010 constructed of a combination of elite professionals who have had years of exceptional exposure and involvement in the IT industry. Our dedicated team has expert knowledge covering all aspects of the IT industry and more specifically in development of innovative products along with aggressive marketing and effective distribution. MX-Technology achieves the highest performance possible through it's continuous research & development which ensures rapid advancements of SSD, memory and Flash drives. MX-Technology enable their customers to achieve maximum efficiency with matching performance to make time spent on work more convenient and productive. MX-Technology is the first computer hardware company in the world to join force with renowned world class artist to generate unique and stylish representation of Mach Xtreme. The first artist to work with Mach Xtreme is a genius graffiti artist from Europe named "Does". MX-Technology through their full dedication and commitment, it's users will be able to continually enjoy the latest high performance products with ultimate reliability at a competitive price point.

   It's been almost two years since i last got my hands on a product by MX-Technology (the Turbo DS 120GB SSD) so when we received their MX-FX product release email quite recently and went over the R/W performance of the drive we were somewhat intrigued as we were also by its rather unique design. You see there aren't really that many USB flash drive manufacturers out there who spend time and resources to create something that can go up against super-fast solutions by Kingston and Corsair so when we get that feeling about one such product naturally we want to put it to the test. So according to MX-Technology the MX-FX 32GB USB Flash Drive can achieve read speeds of up to 125MB/s and write speeds of up to 80MB/s numbers which normally aren't remarkable but as you all know most of the times we get quite faster results than the ones reported by manufacturers and the same turned out to be the case with the MX-FX 32GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive.

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

THE MX-FX 32GB

MX-Technology is amongst the very few manufacturers that ship their USB Flash Drives inside small cardboard packages. Of course there's a clear plastic window at the front that allows you to take a look at the drive.

A few words about the drive along with the specifications list are placed on the left side.

The features of the MX-FX drives along with their serial number and barcode are placed at the rear.

With measurements of 78mm length, 27mm width and 9.3mm height (weighs 25g) the MX-FX drive is certainly not the smallest one around.

Of course to be fair although long and wide it's quite thin compared to other drives as you can see for yourselves.

The company logo is placed at the top of the drive while the available capacity is printed on the base.

There's a very large lanyard area at the rear which also doubles as the activity LED (Red).

While in use the protective cap can be mounted at the rear.

TEST BED

TESTING METHODOLOGY 

   Since flash drives are basically plain storage media devices just like solid state drives and hard disk drives we are using almost the same testing methodology to successfully record the achieved performance numbers. The benchmark suites used are HD Tach RW (Read Speeds / Long Bench 32mb Zone Testing), HD Tune Pro (Read speeds), Sisoftware Sandra Pro (Read / Write speeds), AIDA 64 Engineer Edition (Average Linear Read / Random Read speeds), Crystal Disk Mark x64 (100MB Read / Write speeds) and finally ATTO (Max Read / Max Write speeds). Every test is repeated a total of 6 times after which the average performance numbers are recorded into our charts.

   All tests are performed with our main rig running Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate x64 Service Pack 1 complete with every update until July 1st 2013. As always for comparison purposes in the charts you will also find many other flash drivers which have been tested using the same exact test bench as the one in this review (we really can't keep every flash drive we get forever and also even if we could testing them all again and again would simply not be possible).

TEST RESULTS - AIDA64 / ATTO

TEST RESULTS - HD TACH RW / HD TUNE PRO

TEST RESULTS - SISOFTWARE SANDRA PRO / CRYSTAL DISK MARK X64

CONCLUSION

   One of the reasons i just love performing storage related reviews (aside being quite fast to do) is that in the end there's really not much for me to say since all of the performance charts do that for me instead. So what we see here is a USB 3.0 flash drive which is easily one of the 3 fastest ones we've tested/used to date and that alone is enough to come to a conclusion especially for people such as professionals and enthusiasts who just want and/or need the best possible R/W speeds. Size could be an issue with the MX-FX drive but fortunately for us MX-Technology made it very thin to counteract its length and width so it can fit pretty much everywhere. The only issue some people may encounter is when plugging the MX-FX drive in one of the rear USB ports while other USB devices are also plugged into other ports around it, there you just might have a small problem due to the width of the unit but nothing that can't be resolved simply by removing one of the other USB plugs (or by using one of the front ports).

   Price always plays a huge part in deciding what people can or can't get but with a current price set at 38.90Euros inside the EU (Caseking.de) i really can't find a reason as to why someone would choose a much slower USB Flash Drive (or just not equally fast). True you can find quite a few 64GB USB 3.0 Flash Drives in the market at around the same price tag but certainly not as fast and not as great looking as the MX-FX by MX-Technology something which in the end that matters very much with everything that you carry along with you. In the end the choice comes down to personal preference but based on its speed, looks and price tag the MX-FX 32GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive by MX-Technology walks away with our Platinum Award.

PROS

- Build Quality
- Superior Performance
- Design
- Thin
- Price (For Some) 

CONS

- Width (Rear USB Port Issue)