INTRODUCTION

   If you've been purchasing and downloading movies and series from digital/online stores then you should already know just how much space is required to store all of them in a media library. The other day i went to check my personal media collection to see how much free space i had on that particular hard drive and i noticed that just a single folder with the first season of a 10+ year old series took over 60GB of storage. Normally this wouldn't be an issue but when you have to take some movies with you on a trip (obviously can't take your entire media collection with you) you need either a portable hard drive or a high capacity USB flash drive. Lucky for all of us USB flash drive prices have taken a huge dive over the past few years so today there are even 128GB affordable models available among which is the brand new DataTraveler Micro 3.1 model by Kingston.

   Kingston Technology Company, Inc. is the world’s largest independent manufacturer of memory products. Kingston designs, manufactures and distributes memory products for desktops, laptops, servers, printers, and Flash memory products for PDAs, mobile phones, digital cameras, and MP3 players. Through its global network of subsidiaries and affiliates, Kingston has manufacturing facilities in California, Taiwan, China and sales representatives in the United States, Canada, Europe, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, Australia, New Zealand, India, Taiwan, China, and Latin America.

   Just like the DataTraveler SE9, MicroDuo and Mini lines the DataTraveler Micro 3.1 line is also aimed towards people who are primarily looking for a very compact, durable and affordable USB flash drive with plenty of available storage. The DataTraveler Micro 3.1 line also features a metal enclosure (probably zinc alloy), USB 3.1 Gen.1 connectivity (basically USB 3.0) and according to Kingston the 128GB variant which we have here today can achieve read performance of up to 100MB/s and write performance of up to 15MB/s. Performance may not impress but simply put right now there's just not enough space inside such compact USB flash drives to house high-performance components (more specifically a controller and NAND flash modules). There's still hope however since Kingston always likes to use "smaller" performance numbers compared to the ones we get so let's check and see just how fast the new DataTraveler Micro 3.1 128GB USB flash drive really is.

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

THE DATATRAVELER MICRO 3.1 128GB

Once again we see that Kingston has used a package with a clear plastic section at the front from where you can see the drive itself.

The support operating systems are listed at the rear of the box along with a product description in numerous languages.

The box contains just the 24.95mm long, 12.2mm wide, 4.5mm thick and 3g heavy DataTraveler Micro 3.1 USB flash drive.

To have a better idea about its size we placed it right next to several other USB flash drives.

Kingston has engraved the product name capacity at the front of the drive and their name at the rear (there's a large hole at the top of the drive so you can easily attach the drive to your keys or a lanyard).

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-1000MB 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 (0 = we were unable to complete that test).

    All tests are performed with our main rig running Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate x64 Service Pack 1 complete with every update until April 15th 2016 (UASP compatible models are tested using a fresh Windows 8.1 installation on a Plextor m6e). 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

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CONCLUSION

   The DataTraveler Micro 3.1 USB 3.1 Gen.1 128GB flash drive may not be fast but as it turns out our suspicions were right on since in our tests we recorded read speeds as high as 144.9MB/s and write speeds as high as 20MB/s. Agreed these numbers are nowhere near as the ones we see most of the time from USB 3.0/3.1 Gen.1 flash drives like the recently reviewed Impact by Mushkin or the HyperX Savage again by Kingston but as also mentioned earlier such tiny enclosures simply can’t accommodate the needed components to achieve such performance (at least not as we speak). Speaking of tiny well not much to say there since the 3g heavy metal enclosure (zinc alloy?) takes very little space when placed with your keys and is also very durable.

   So what about price? Well as we speak the DataTraveler Micro 3.1 USB 3.1 Gen.1 128GB flash drive retails for USD107.48 inside the EU (Newegg.com) and 62.82Euros inside the EU (Amazon.co.uk). Inside the EU pricing is actually quite good for a 128GB USB 3.1 Gen 1 flash drive but it’s obvious that the same doesn’t apply for the USA since we all feel a significant price cut is in order. Overall the DataTraveler Micro 3.1 USB 3.1 Gen.1 line is the ideal choice for people looking for a tiny USB flash drive to carry around with them with quite good read performance and plenty of storage and it’s certainly worth our Golden Award.

PROS

- Build Quality
- Tiny Size
- 3g Weight
- 128GB
- Design
- 5 Year Warranty
- Price (EU)

CONS

- Price (USA)