The Best USB Flash Drives

Wirecutter’s PC team has researched and tested hundreds of USB flash drives since 2013. Updates writer Ivy Liscomb spent more than 60 hours researching, sorting, testing, and retesting all new USB drives for this guide on multiple devices and in multiple test scenarios.

Supervising editor Arthur Gies, who contributed to the previous version of this guide, has been covering consumer technology and PC hardware since 2009. Prior to his time at Wirecutter, he covered laptops and PC hardware for outlets such as PCWorld, IGN, Joystiq, and Polygon. He has owned hundreds of (mostly terrible) USB flash drives since 2003.

While cloud storage has become an increasingly popular option for sharing files and moving things from one computer to another, a USB flash drive, or thumb drive, often presents the fastest, easiest way to move a single large file or a large collection of many files. There’s no need for a fast internet connection, and you don’t have to fuss with a local Wi-Fi network or Bluetooth connection. The process is as simple as copying files to the thumb drive, disconnecting it, and moving it to another computer.

For moving or backing up especially large amounts of data—think terabytes—an external or portable hard drive makes more sense than a flash drive. For large amounts of data—think many hundreds of gigabytes—a portable SSD is more expensive but faster than a hard drive or any of our USB flash drive recommendations. But our picks for this guide all have at least 128 GB of storage, which should be more than enough space for most projects and additional files for most people. And flash drives usually provide faster speeds, often significantly faster, than what you can get from any external mechanical hard drive.

USB 3.0, which now includes USB 3.1 and 3.2, has been the industry standard since 2013. At this point USB 2.0 thumb drives are very slow—often a tenth of the speed of USB 3.0 or 3.1 drives—and have far less capacity than modern devices. A USB 2.0 drive, if you find one, wouldn’t save you much, so don’t spend money on that kind.

Our picks for this guide offer performance that exceeds or at least matches the transfer speeds of slow, traditional platter-based hard drives. Unless you need the fastest possible external-storage speed and significantly more space, such as for video editing or other storage-intensive projects, you probably don’t need an external solid-state drive.

For this guide, we considered the real-world advantages of the small differences in flash drives alongside the potential price and storage-size sweet spot. We came to the following conclusions.

• Price: Most people shouldn’t pay more than around $40 for a USB flash drive. Spending more can sometimes get you more than 256 GB of storage, hardware encryption, or a somewhat more durable case, but more expensive drives don’t really add any benefits for everyday uses.
• Capacity: The price of flash storage in thumb drives continues to drop, and in our research and testing we’ve found that the performance of many models varies depending on the amount of storage included. Most people should find that the minimum 128 GB of storage in our current picks gives them plenty of space to store big and small files, without their having to constantly delete some to make room.
• Drive speed: Write speeds are a big consideration in our flash drive recommendations—a twofold increase in transfer speed can lead to a practical difference of 15 to 30 minutes of saved time with large folders of variable file sizes. Some of our picks might not match the speeds of many SSDs, but they should perform better than any platter-based hard drive.
• Connection type: Our top pick for this guide is a USB-A drive that offers more consistent speeds than our USB-C pick, but our USB-C pick is still quite fast and doesn’t require an additional dongle for use with modern MacBooks or other laptops that primarily have USB-C ports.
• Size and build quality: A flash drive should fit easily into a USB port, without making you worry that you might break the drive or the port. The flash drive should also be durable enough for you to toss it into a bag without concern. We consider traditional stick flash drives, flash drives with retractable heads, and smaller, thumbnail-sized drives.
• Warranty and customer service: Warranties of three to five years are standard among USB flash drives from major manufacturers, a general indication that a company will stand by its product for at least a few years. Strong customer service is valuable if something goes wrong. SanDisk, for example, offers on certain products what it refers to as a limited lifetime warranty, which primarily covers nonstandard drive failure. Standard wear and tear over time isn’t covered, nor is non-approved activity, which includes, say, use of a USB flash drive as network-attached storage, or other uses that involve continuous access of the storage media.

In addition to the drives we tested for the previous version of this guide, we researched USB flash drives introduced in the past two years. After compiling a list of possible candidates, we then looked through owner reviews on retailer sites such as Amazon and Newegg before settling on the seven new drives we tested for this update.

First, we tested the drives’ sequential and random speeds using CrystalDiskMark benchmarking software. We then ran two file-copy tests: one with a single 8 GB file, the other with a 24 GB folder containing 12 folders with more than 4,700 MP3 files among them. We used Robocopy on Windows, and we fully formatted the drive between each type of test. We copied each folder to and from each drive three times and then averaged the results. To ensure that different platforms recognized the drives, we plugged them into several devices, including a TCL TV and a PlayStation 4.

CrystalDiskMark benchmarking results

In addition, we tried the drives’ sliding mechanisms, and during file transfers we noted temperatures by touch to confirm that none got too hot. Finally, we created a bootable installer for Windows 10 and installed it on each of our final contenders to see whether they worked as bootable drives.

The Patriot Supersonic Rage Prime USB 3.2 Gen 2 (250 GB) is the fastest and most reliable of all the USB-A flash drives we tested. Typically around $40 for 250 GB of storage, the pricing is great, and the drive has a retractable design, eliminating the need to keep track of a tiny, easily lost cap.

It’s reliable across the board. In the course of using the Patriot flash drive across multiple laptops and numerous tests, we found that it was one of the few drives that held up without a hiccup. Most other drives exhibited at least a few seconds’ worth of discrepancy here and there, but the Patriot drive performed steadily and consistently well in all testing scenarios.

It has a great price per gigabyte. Though the price for a good, high-performance USB drive has stayed about the same since our previous update to this guide (around $40), the amount of storage you can get for that price has increased dramatically. The Patriot drive is a great example, providing 250 GB of storage rather than the previous standard of 128 GB.

It’s fast, even on more demanding tasks. Though transferring 24 GB of small MP3 files was challenging for many of the drives we tested, the Patriot drive handled the task like a champ, reading the data almost 20 seconds faster than our runner-up and writing it nearly 2.5 minutes faster.

Even if you have an extensive library of music or pictures, the Patriot drive can significantly cut down the time that transferring those files might take, in both directions. In our tests, it read a simple 8 GB file 7 seconds faster than our runner-up, and it wrote the same file 8 seconds faster.

24 GB small-file transfer test

Even if your current laptop or computer doesn’t have the latest, USB 3.2 Gen 2 port, the Patriot drive will provide extremely fast transfer speeds. We tested the Patriot drive on both a USB 3.2 Gen 2 port and an older, USB 3.2 Gen 1 port, and the difference was slight: Only a few seconds separated the two ports’ results for the 8 GB file, and the drive took about a minute longer to read and write the 24 GB folder on the older port than on the USB 3.2 Gen 2 port. Both of those results are faster than what we saw from our runner-up, the SanDisk drive, in the same USB 3.2 Gen 1 port test. Even if you have an older computer, these speeds still make the Patriot drive a great choice for USB storage.

Though CrystalDiskMark tests don’t translate directly to real-world results, the Patriot drive scored comfortably high in that synthetic benchmark, posting read and write speeds of 604.78 megabytes per second and 448.50 MB/s, respectively. The SanDisk Extreme Pro, our runner-up, achieved a 352.85 MB/s read speed and a 320.32 MB/s write speed, which is fast but not quite a match for the Patriot’s speeds. Our pick for a USB-C flash drive, the Kingston DataTraveler Max Type-C, produced extremely fast results in the CrystalDiskMark tests, registering speeds of 1069.56 MB/s for the read and 754.24 MB/s for the write. While those numbers are impressive, in our real-world tests we often saw such results only in the initial use of that Kingston drive; the drive flagged in speed after heavy use.

It’s small, and there’s no cap to lose. The Patriot drive measures around 2 inches long and has a light plastic casing that feels a little cheap, though not to the extent that we were concerned it would crack or break in regular use. It’s notably light, and it features a retracting head. The case is easy to close and would be no problem even for those with limited hand strength or dexterity; however, on occasion the easy-close case can slide back slightly while you’re plugging in the drive and get in your way.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

It can get warm. Like most of the flash drives we tested, the Patriot Supersonic Rage Prime heats up after heavy use. In our tests, though, its plastic casing never grew warm enough to cause discomfort.

Plugging it in can be a little irritating. Though the case’s slide mechanism can get in your way, the sliding action is smooth and easy to manipulate. There’s a bit of a trick to plugging in the drive, but once we figured out the best way to do it, we didn’t even notice the issue anymore.

The head can collect lint. We prefer retractable USB drives because they eliminate the need to keep track of a tiny cap in order to protect and use your drive. But because the Patriot drive lacks a cover, those who regularly put their flash drives in pockets or bags might find that it attracts some dust. In practice, however, this is unlikely to happen.

The SanDisk Extreme Pro USB 3.2 (128 GB) was hot on the Patriot Supersonic Rage Prime’s heels in our speed tests, and as our previous top pick (formerly named the Extreme Pro USB 3.1), it has proven its reliability over several years. It has a solid metal case that feels durable and pleasant to handle. It also includes an LED activity light, a feature that USB drives often lack, and its USB connector is retractable, so it has no parts to lose and it shouldn’t get damaged when you throw it in a bag. SanDisk covers the Extreme Pro USB 3.2 with a limited lifetime warranty.

8 GB big-file transfer test

It’s fast. The SanDisk drive did well in both reading and writing files, achieving read speeds of 23 seconds and write speeds of 29 seconds in our 8 GB large-file test plus read and write speeds of 1 minute 22 seconds and 3 minutes 59 seconds, respectively, on our 24 GB small-files test. Though the Extreme Pro doesn’t quite measure up to the Supersonic Rage Prime, its performance is more than respectable.

But it’s a little more expensive than the Patriot drive. This SanDisk drive is usually priced around $40 to $45 for the 128 GB version, whereas the Patriot drive is priced similarly (and often less) for nearly double the amount of storage at 250 GB. But 128 GB is usually more than enough space for most situations, and we think that only those people who have extensive digital libraries or big projects will hit the storage limit.

It’s durable and well designed. The Extreme Pro drive’s aluminum casing measures just under 3 inches long. It features a retracting head that snaps out with a satisfying thunk and should stay in place until you unlock it; this means that you have no caps to lose, though you might have to deal with some lint if you throw the drive in the wrong bag.

Compared with the Patriot drive’s design, this SanDisk model’s design might pose a bit more of a challenge for those with very limited hand strength or dexterity, as its sliding mechanism is a little harder to move, but for most people it should present no issue. It weighs slightly more than the other drives we tested for this update, and it feels solid and sturdy in the hand.

The Kingston DataTraveler Max Type-C (256 GB) is a good option for anyone who needs a USB drive that works with USB-C ports without an adapter or dongle. Both of our USB-A picks were reliably faster than this drive in our tests, but the DataTraveler Max Type-C can churn out some impressive speeds as long as you don’t subject it to heavy, constant use.

It’s blazing fast, but inconsistently so. Though this Kingston drive regularly posted speeds around 700 MB/s to 900 MB/s on both the 8 GB and 24 GB read tests, its write speeds were less impressive, landing between 70 MB/s and 80 MB/s on both write tests. Its speeds always decreased after heavy usage during hours of full reformatting and file transferring (the same conditions to which we subjected all the drives in the test group), so if you know that you’ll be using your flash drive lightly and need it only for transferring files between USB-C devices, this model will serve you well.

It gets uncomfortably hot, and the housing feels cheap. Though this drive did not burn us, we could imagine that its high temperature might catch some people by surprise. As for the design, the sliding mechanism takes up the entire top half of the drive; plugging the drive in without activating the slide can be difficult as a result. Overall, unless you have a strict aversion to dongles and adapters and are married to USB-C with no thought of leaving, we recommend one of our USB-A picks with a USB-C adapter over this model.

You can find thousands of USB flash drives available for purchase, and though we haven’t used every single one, we have tested a good amount. Here we’ve listed just a few that didn’t make the cut in our latest round of testing.

The Kingston DataTraveler Max Type-A (256 GB) has all the same quirks as its USB-C counterpart, without the novelty of USB-C support. It offers lots of space for a good price, but in our tests it was too inconsistent to recommend, despite posting blistering speeds on read tasks.

The Lexar JumpDrive P30 USB 3.2 Gen 1 (128 GB) is marketed as a more premium USB flash drive, but in our tests it was significantly slower than our runner-up drive from SanDisk on the 24 GB complex file transfers. It has a pleasingly solid body with a metal outer casing and an indicator light, and temperature-wise it’s the coolest drive we tested, but its sliding mechanism is not as easy and smooth as that of the SanDisk drive. A little included carrying pouch with a small loop on the back protects the drive from dust and dirt.

The Samsung Type-C (256 GB) is budget-friendly and has plenty of storage capacity, but in our tests it couldn’t keep up on the 24 GB small-file transfer, taking more than 6.5 minutes for the write. It’s almost too small to grip properly, and it has a cap that is difficult to remove—we could imagine accidentally flinging the cap, the drive, or both into a dark, inconvenient corner while trying to take it off. Unless you are looking for the smallest drive possible, we recommend our top USB-A picks instead.

We were hopeful about the SSK SD300 (256 GB) because it is a convertible USB-A–to–C drive that comes with an adapter, but unlike our previous convertible pick from Samsung, the SD300 lacks a nifty all-in-one design that allows the adapter to snap into the body for ease of use. In addition, this model was the most unreliable drive we tested, as nearly half the time it would disconnect unexpectedly during a test or freeze the window, forcing us to kill the task and start over. It was also difficult to plug in and remove.

This article was edited by Arthur Gies, Signe Brewster, and Caitlin McGarry.