Kingston Digital Releases Type-A Addition to DataTraveler Max USB 3.2 Gen 2 Series

[TheLostSwede]

Kingston Digital, Inc., the flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., a world leader in memory products and technology solutions, today announces the addition of the DataTraveler Max Type-A. It joins DataTraveler Max, the USB Type-C model, to complete the Kingston DT Max series of next-gen, high performance USB flash drives. Both drives leverage the latest USB 3.2 Gen 2 standard.

The DataTraveler Max (DT Max) series delivers record-breaking speeds up to 1,000 MB/s read and 900 MB/s write to make them some of the fastest USB drives on the market and the first of its kind. DT Max is designed with portability and convenience in mind. DT Max Type-A features a merlot and black design with Type-A connector, while the original DT Max features an all-black design with Type-C connector to differentiate the drives at first glance. The unique ridged casing protects the connector when it is not in use and is easy to move in a single motion. Seamlessly transfer and store large digital files such as HD photos, 4K/8K videos, music and more with top speeds and high capacities up to 1TB3. The addition of a keyring loop and LED status indicator makes the drive ideal for users who need storage on-the-go.




"The DT Max Series of USB flash drives offer industry-leading speeds and uncompromised storage space to enable consumers to create and keep up with today's content demands - now supporting both Type-C and Type-A ports," said Carissa Blegen, flash product manager, Kingston. "Introducing a Type-A version of the recording-breaking DT Max series raises the bar and gives Kingston a more complete line of high performance solutions in the USB storage category."

DataTraveler Max series is available in capacities 256 GB to 1 TB and is backed by a five-year warranty with free technical support.

DataTraveler Max USB 3.2 Gen 2 Series Flash Drive Features and Specifications:

• Latest USB 3.2 Gen 2 Standard: Move your files in a flash with incredible speeds up to 1,000 MB/s Read, 900 MB/s Write.
• Uncompromised Storage: Available in a range of high capacities from 256 GB-1 TB to carry your digital library on-the-go.
• Dual Option for Connectivity: USB Type-C 1 and Type-A connector varieties to support next-gen and traditional laptops or desktops for seamless file transfers.
• Unique Design: Convenient one-handed sliding cap, LED status indicator, and functional keyring loop.
• Capacities: 256 GB, 512 GB, 1 TB
• Interface: USB 3.2 Gen 2
• Speed: Up to 11,000 MBs read, 900 MB/s write
• Dimensions:
  • Type-C: 82.17 mm x 22.00 mm x 9.02 mm
  • Type-A: 91.17 mm 22.00 mm x 9.02 mm
• Weight:
  • Type-C: 12 g
  • Type-A: 14 g
• Operating temperature: 0°C~60°C
• Storage temperature: -20°C~85°C
• Warranty/support: 5-year warranty with free technical support
• Compatible with: Windows 11, 10, 8.1, Mac OS (v. 10.14.x +), Linux (v. 2.6.x +), Chrome OS

View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[TheLostSwede]

Review for those interested. Based around the Silicon Motion SM2320 controller, so no bridge chip.

Kingston DataTraveler Max UFD Series Review: New Type-A Thumb Drive Retains NVMe Performance

www.anandtech.com

 

[trsttte]

Plastic housing so likely to overheat itself to death like most other cheap USB drives, no thanks

 

[TheLostSwede]

Plastic housing so likely to overheat itself to death like most other cheap USB drives, no thanks

Unlikely, as it's a single chip solution and should be a lot cooler.

 

[Chrispy_]

Why can't kingston make a decent small USB drive? This is trash because it's WAAAAAY too big to be hanging off a USB port, especially the previous USB-C one, and it's WAAAAAY too big to put on a keyring. Plastic, too - so not particularly durable given the size and fragility of lead-free solder, which is all it's hanging off thanks the the plastic being merely a cosmetic cover rather than a structural part of the USB connector. On a keyring it would get smashed to pieces within a month of just being in a pocket between keys.

I use Kingston DT SE9 and DT Micro because they're cheap, durable, tiny, and fit on a keyring where you might actually have it with you when you need it, but they're both godawful for write speed at 14MB/s and 20MB/s respectively.

It's not impossible to make tiny, durable, capless, keyring-friendly flash drives with order-of-magnitude better performance because Sandisk, Transcend, Samsung etc are all capable of doing so. What's Kingston's problem, eh?

Maybe I'm weird in not liking large flash drives that you can't carry around all the time, but even in this group of drives above, Kingston's need to up their game here though because the competition at very similar prices are literally 5-10x faster. Do you want to wait nearly four minutes for a file copy that would be done in 20-30 seconds on any other competing product? As a one-off it's no big deal, but when you start to use it regularly you realise you bought the wrong product.

 

[trsttte]

Why can't kingston make a decent small USB drive? This is trash because it's WAAAAAY too big to be hanging off a USB port, especially the previous USB-C one, and it's WAAAAAY too big to put on a keyring. Plastic, too - so not particularly durable given the size and fragility of lead-free solder, which is all it's hanging off thanks the the plastic being merely a cosmetic cover rather than a structural part of the USB connector. On a keyring it would get smashed to pieces within a month of just being in a pocket between keys.

I use Kingston DT SE9 and DT Micro because they're cheap, durable, tiny, and fit on a keyring where you might actually have it with you when you need it, but they're both godawful for write speed at 14MB/s and 20MB/s respectively.

It's not impossible to make tiny, durable, capless, keyring-friendly flash drives with order-of-magnitude better performance because Sandisk, Transcend, Samsung etc are all capable of doing so. What's Kingston's problem, eh?

View attachment 254423View attachment 254424View attachment 254425View attachment 254426

Maybe I'm weird in not liking large flash drives that you can't carry around all the time, but even in this group of drives above, Kingston's need to up their game here though because the competition at very similar prices are literally 5-10x faster. Do you want to wait nearly four minutes for a file copy that would be done in 20-30 seconds on any other competing product? As a one-off it's no big deal, but when you start to use it regularly you realise you bought the wrong product.

Not to mention the stupid slide design they insist on using that are just terrible and become loose after a few months as well and make it more difficult to insert the drive because it keeps closing unless you hold the back. Just bad through and through

 

[thewan]

Maybe I'm weird in not liking large flash drives that you can't carry around all the time, but even in this group of drives above, Kingston's need to up their game here though because the competition at very similar prices are literally 5-10x faster. Do you want to wait nearly four minutes for a file copy that would be done in 20-30 seconds on any other competing product? As a one-off it's no big deal, but when you start to use it regularly you realise you bought the wrong product.

Do you have a review or comparison to back up you claims? based on my own experience with sandisks range of tiny flash drive over the years, they have the same terrible max out a 20mbps write speeds. Unless of course you are talking about maybe 256gb or 512gb ones which are probably faster than the mainstream 128gb thats more widely available, but those are ungodly expensive.

 

[Chrispy_]

Do you have a review or comparison to back up you claims? based on my own experience with sandisks range of tiny flash drive over the years, they have the same terrible max out a 20mbps write speeds. Unless of course you are talking about maybe 256gb or 512gb ones which are probably faster than the mainstream 128gb thats more widely available, but those are ungodly expensive.

I am talking about larger capacity for the Kingston. I have a 256 DTMicro that writes at 20MB/s, and only for about 3 minutes before dropping in speed - which is inexcusably piss-poor.

Samsung Bar Plus is the slowest at 62MB/s (tested by Storage Review, despite a 90MB/s spec). That's 4.5x faster than my largest and newest 256GB Kingston DT Micro.
The tiny Sandisk Ultra Flair is 96MB/s, as is the smallest drive I know of, the Ultra Fit
The even smaller Transcend Jetflash 890 is 82MB/s and the even tinier Jetflash 710 is 79MB/s
Can't find reviews, but the Integral Fusion 128GB is listed as 100MB/s write

None of these are going to set the world on fire, but when your Kingston drive is bimbling along like a soggy sandwich at 10-14MB/s it's not hard to wish you'd bough a product that was 4.4x - 10x faster for the same money.

In a weird metric of "performance per cubic millimetre", these tiny drives are on a par with the chungus Datatraveler Max in this news article.
Performance per cubic millimetre actually makes sense where the larger something is, the less likely it is to be in your pocket when you need it.
When you don't have it, the performance is 0MB/s

 

[bug]

I'm going to go against what was written before and say performance is more important than size. 1-2GB you can easily put on Google Drive or something. But if you routinely move bigger files, you need to be able to transfer them in under half an hour.

 

[Chrispy_]

I'm going to go against what was written before and say performance is more important than size. 1-2GB you can easily put on Google Drive or something. But if you routinely move bigger files, you need to be able to transfer them in under half an hour.

If performance is what you want then this is a dumpster fire of a failure.

3 of the first 4 reviews for this drive are claiming Kingston lie about their write speeds. I can back that up with my own experience of Kingston write speeds being falsely advertised.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kingston-DataTraveler-Max-Flash-Drive/dp/B09DVQ32XQ

375MB/s when sold as 900MB/s is bad, but if size is not really the issue there are slightly larger "proper" SSDs for similar or even cheaper that are genuinely capable of saturating the 10GB/s USB interface in both directions. Samsung T7 is almost 3x faster for the same price as this Kinston DT Max, Crucial X8 is at least twice the speed for about 30% less than this DT Max. Should you have access to a Thunderbolt3 port, Sabrent's £80 TB3 enclosure will let you put in any NVMe drive and a £65 SN570 will give you 2700MB/s in and out for fractionally more money than the DT Max linked above.

Perhaps those customer CDM screenshots are fake, but CDM is child's play to run and much harder to fake - plus why would buyers lie about it? They're simply disappointed and upset that they've been lied to by Kingston.

 

[Lianna]

If performance is what you want then this is a dumpster fire of a failure.

3 of the first 4 reviews for this drive are claiming Kingston lie about their write speeds. I can back that up with my own experience of Kingston write speeds being falsely advertised.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kingston-DataTraveler-Max-Flash-Drive/dp/B09DVQ32XQ

375MB/s when sold as 900MB/s is bad, but if size is not really the issue there are slightly larger "proper" SSDs for similar or even cheaper that are genuinely capable of saturating the 10GB/s USB interface in both directions. Samsung T7 is almost 3x faster for the same price as this Kinston DT Max, Crucial X8 is at least twice the speed for about 30% less than this DT Max. Should you have access to a Thunderbolt3 port, Sabrent's £80 TB3 enclosure will let you put in any NVMe drive and a £65 SN570 will give you 2700MB/s in and out for fractionally more money than the DT Max linked above.

Perhaps those customer CDM screenshots are fake, but CDM is child's play to run and much harder to fake - plus why would buyers lie about it? They're simply disappointed and upset that they've been lied to by Kingston.

If you go for pure performance and consistency, like hammering it with a few hundred GB, then according to some reviews (StorageReview, Tom's) SanDisk Extreme SSD v2 or larger, faster and pricier Extreme Pro SSD v2 are some of the best options.
I really like medium size flash drives. More performance focused: Transcend JetFlash 920 or 930C (I use the latter). Pro: both directions like 350 MB/s even on 128GB size, 930C has both A and C connectors, C on a stub, 128GB-512 GB sizes. Con: no keyring/lanyard hole, nonsymmetrical caps. More travel friendly: Samsung Duo Plus. Pro: reads over 300 MB/s, writes 60 MB/s but consistent, both A and C connectors through integrated adapter, lanyard holes (second in cap so you can't lose it if both on lanyard). Cons: cap only for C connector, C connector not on a stub so any recessed port is trouble - like bumper case on a phone, have to remove/slide off before connecting.

 

[Chrispy_]

Gotta admit I like the A+C reversible drives, but the C connector is too fragile to leave uncapped on a keyring.

Perhaps someone will release one that's capless, all-metal, keyring-friendly, and doesn't completely suck for write speeds at some point soon. I think I can tolerate writes as slow as 50MB/s if I get the convenience of it being on my keychain. 3 gigs a minute is pretty bad, but the overwhelming majority of things I'm likely to plug it into are probably on WiFi anyway so 50MB/s is all they'd get from internet/network drives too.