SanDisk Extreme Pro 128GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive Review

By Nathan Kirsch

Final Thoughts on the SanDisk Extreme Pro USB 3.0 Flash Drive

The SanDisk Extreme Pro 128GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive is a tad on the expensive side, but hot damn it is fast. In fact this is the fastest USB 3.0 Flash Drive that we have reviewed to date and for that we have to thank SanDisk! We also like that this high-end drive looks normal, isn’t too bulky and is still practical. When the first high-end USB 3.0 Flash drives came out they were huge and ran hot, but it appears those days are thankfully long gone.

Performance was outstanding and we were able to confirm the rated sequential read/write speeds of 260/240MB/s on our nearly 2-year old Intel Ultrabook. You don’t have to own the latest notebook or desktop PC to fully utilize this drive and that is really nice. The USB 3.0 standard has been around for years now and the extra bandwidth has yet to be fully utilized by consumer Flash drives, so we are still able to get nice performance gains when new drives like this come to market. For the past year out go to USB 3.0 Flash drive in the test lab for quickly moving data around was the Patriot Supersonic Magnum 256GB Flash Drive that we reviewed in March 2013. That drive was fast (250MB/s read and 160MB/s write speeds), but the SanDisk Extreme Pro USB 3.0 Flash drive as higher rated speeds and doesn’t block ports next to where is it plugged in as it is narrower! This became problematic over the past year as on the ASUS UX31A Zenbook if we plugged in the Patriot drive on the right hand side we couldn’t plug in the notebook power connector and on the left hand side it blocked the headphone jack. The SanDisk Extreme Pro USB 3.0 Flash Drive doesn’t block either, so the form factor on this drive is a big selling point as well as the performance it offers. sandisk-extreme-pro-flash-drive

The SanDisk Extreme PRO 128GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive is already available on Amazon for $150.00 shipped and comes backed by a lifetime warranty. At $1.17 per GB it is by no means the lowest cost drive on the market, but that isn’t who this drive is aimed at. SanDisk brought this drive to the market and targeted the high-end prosumer and enthusiast niche and it looks like the nailed it.

If you are looking for an incredibly fast drive to move your music, pictures, videos and other data around with the SanDisk Extreme Pro USB 3.0 Flash Drive should be at the top of your shopping list. This drive is designed for speed and if you move Gigabytes of data around every day this product will save you time and in the corporate world time is money and in our personal lives that means more time with our families.

LR Editors' Choice

Legit Bottom Line: The SanDisk Extreme Pro USB 3.0 Flash Drive is the fastest that we have ever tested and it really sets the bar for what one should expect from a prosumer device in 2014!