While on one of our longer stops in Pepcom, we talked with the folks at Kingston, who showed off two of their latest USB devices. The first is the DT50 (Data Traveler 50), a cap less USB Flash drive that ranges in capacity from 8GB to 128GB. The second, is the MobileLite G4, a multifunction card reader that supports SD, SDHC, SDXC, UHS-II and microSD/SDHC/SDXC, and UHS-I. Once we were finished interviewing with Kingston I brought the two to TOV H.Q. which gave me time to test them out together.
I started with the DataTraveler 50 (DT50/64GB), which has a polished metal casing with the "Kingston" name carved on one side and DT50 etched on the other. And if seeing their logo isn’t your thing there is an option, especially for those buying in bulk direct from Kingston.com, to customize the device by putting your own logo and digital files. There are 5 color accents available on the hoop, which doubles as capacity identifiers:
- Purple - DT50/8GB
- Green - DT50/16GB
- Red - DT50/32GB
- Blue - DT50/64GB
- Black - DT50/128GB
Now that we're done with the exterior, it’s time to test the internals of this USB 3.0 Fast2 device. I went through the pleasure of reading the tech sheet so you don’t have to and in an optimal environment, you can expect the 8-16 GB to perform at 30MB/s read & 5MB/s write and the 32-128GB to perform at 110MB/s read and 15MB/s write. So how did mine do on a 4-year old PC? I had a read speed of 105MB/s and a write speed of 21MB/s. Considering I have an older desktop with an aftermarket 3.0 USB Hub, I have to say that it performed very well.
Next on the list is the MobileLite G4, which is also capless, with a polished metal on the port end and black on the reader side of it. On this device both sides have Kingston and MobileLite G4 etched on it. This device is also USB 3.0 and backward compatible with a guaranteed 2-year warranty and free technical support. I used two SD cards Micro and SDHC; both were rather old but performed their transfers very well. When both were plugged in simultaneously they were recognized as separated drives.
The Bang:
First up, The DT50 works very well and through my performance and the benchmark testing, I was able to move my large files with ease. I realize I have an older machine and might have had something to do with the results. And if you do have an older machine don’t worry, like most USB devices, it’s still compatible with USB 2.0. Shout out to the many office workers that still have to deal with ancient machines. I also like seeing that this device is backed by a five-year warranty, free technical support. That’s a really long time for a USB in my book. The MobileLite performed very well also, but I didn’t have any good SD cards to use for some reason. The little stash I had on my desk had vanished and I was only able to test it out with a very old SDHC 16 GB and a class 4 Micro SD, which in its day wasn't all that decent.
The Slack:
The MobileLite G4 is a space hog and will take up two USB spaces even on a USB hub.
Kingston USBs - the DT50 and the MobileLite G4 have both performed very well and consistently from the moment they’re plugged in towards the end of my testing phase. In the end, they're the perfect USB devices to have on hand, to handle all of your storage needs. Out of TOV 5 stars, I'm giving both the DT50 and the MobileLite G4 5 stars of awesome!
