Like other manufacturers, Maxell has called its eSATA key 'SSD', clearly capitalising on the marketing opportunity that those three letters represent.

Maxell claims that this key can reach data transfer rates that can completely surpass what's available over USB with write speeds of 24 MB/s and read speeds of 75 MB/s.  The manufacturer's claims are less ambitious for USB, where Maxell hopes for speeds of 16 MB/s and 24 MB/s respectively.

USB: Excellent Speeds

Maxell SSD 32 GB USB Transcend JetFlash 160 4 GB

Over USB, this key managed to produce the speeds claimed by Maxell, even beating them when reading data.  Writing files to the key, the 32 GB SSD reaches 12.1 MB/s, which puts it up there with the 8 GB Corsair Voyager GT and beats the 32 GB version of the same key.  Reading files from the key, the SSD really takes off and completely beats all of the other USB keys we've ever seen, reaching an average of 26.9 MB/s where Corsair only managed 21.3 MB/s.  It's an excellent result for Maxell.

eSATA: Unbeatable speeds

Maxell SSD 32 GB eSATA Transcend JetFlash 160 4 GB

When using eSATA, the data transfer rates are quite simply incredible, soaring to around twice as fast as the very best USB keys.  For writing and reading data, Maxell's 32 GB SSD reaches average speeds of 26 MB/s and 57.5 MB/s respectively.