With a supposed read speed of 210x (or 31.5 MB/s), Patriot Memory claims to offer the fastest USB flash drive on the market. According to the manufacturer, it’s suitable for business as well as home use, since it’s able to store large files of all types (photos, video, PowerPoint presentations, etc.) thanks to its large (64 GB) capacity. Plus, its small size will appeal to users who constantly find themselves on the go.

Delivering on speed

As we mentioned above, the manufacturer claims a read speed of 31.5 MB/s. The tests we ran reported rates in line with that. The 64 GB Magnum has the fastest read speeds in the roundup, peaking at 31.8 MB/s. With this kind of speed, you can copy a 4 GB file from the drive to your computer in about two minutes.

Write speed, however, is where this drive fell apart. At best, we clocked 14.2 MB/s with large files. Under the same conditions, the OCZ Rally 2 Turbo 4 GB reached 22.6 MB/s. Copying a 4 GB to the Magnum will take 4 minutes 40 seconds, significantly longer than the three minutes it would take using the OCZ drive.