SanDisk Ultra Flair USB Pen Drive Review 2024: Is it the best Flash Drive?

I recently bought a new SanDisk Ultra Flair USB 3.0 Pen Drive (32GB). I had no need but I got it to review for you people.

This pen drive/flash drive comes in different variants i.e. USB 3.0, and USB 3.1 Gen 2. So, I got the most popular one and reviewed it here on my two different computers. I personally found this flash drive pretty reliable and good-looking.

Let’s first clear some important things about its naming because it literally is pretty confusing.

This pen drive is basically a USB 3.0 Pen-Drive. But, when you open this drive on your computer, you may see USB 3.2 Gen 1 written along with it. Basically, USB 3.0, USB 3.1 Gen 1, and USB 3.2 Gen 1 have the same maximum speed i.e. 5 Gbps.

The company claims that this drive can offer you up to 150 MB/s read speed which I almost achieved in my testing. So, without any further delays, let’s get started.

Theoretical Specifications

This pen drive comes in five storage variants i.e. 32GB, 64GB, 128GB, 256GB, 512GB.

Design

The drive is pretty lightweight and easy to carry. It has a mixed body made up of metal and plastic. Its dimensions are mm 21.13 x 42.42 x 60.6. I like the way they have designed this drive to be more sleek and compact.

Benchmark Setup

I have tested this drive on my Windows Test System which I have built recently. Below are the specifications.

CPU: Intel Core i5 12700K

Motherboard: MSI Pro Z690-A DDR5

OS: Windows 11 Pro

RAM: DDR5 4200MHz 16GB

Storage: 1TB Silicon Power Gen 4 NVMe SSD

Benchmark 1: AJA System Test Score

Results: As the company claimed, this drive is capable of reaching around 150 MB/s read speed. I am really impressed by the numbers because not all products will reach their theoretical potential at all.

Benchmark 2: CrystalDiskMark 8.0.4

Results: I ran a single CrystalDiskMark test on this drive and I knew it is capable of offering more than what the company has to say. I used the 1 GiB test and the results are in front of you. The random read/write speed is low as expected with any USB drive. But, the sequential read and write speed is totally acceptable.

Benchmark 3: ATTO Disk Benchmark

Sequential Read Score

For this test, I used block sizes from 512B to 64MB. The queue depth is 4 and the chart below shows both read and write performance scores. Generally, this test is done using 128K block size with different queue depths but this one is done with a single queue depth with different block sizes.

4KB Random Read/Write performance

As you all know, the random read/write tests are done with 4KB block size universally. So, I changed the Queue Depth between the range of 1 and 32. Below is the chart showing the results.

The results are pretty stable because this drive is designed to work on very low random read/write speeds. You can expect below 10 MB/s read speed when you are working with too many files of different types.

What do I think about this pen/flash drive?

I am using this drive for quite a while and I found it really impressive. I have used it to move very big files from one system to another. It starts to heat up a little when put under a huge load but that’s normal with all the USB drives.

The performance is constant. I literally haven’t seen any performance drop while moving any kind of files. Sandisk Ultra Flair drive is great for personal as well as professional usage. So, I can definitely recommend this product to you.

Price

I got my 32GB Sandisk Ultra Flair just for around 8 bucks. The 3.1 variant is going to be a little expensive. It is perhaps the best price you can get to see for this kind of high-performance drive.

Should you buy it?

Definitely, this product is really a perfect option to choose. It is inexpensive yet high-performance. It has got 5-year limited warranty as well. You have seen the benchmarks and I think this speed is more than enough for most of the users. If you need more speed, you can go for the USB 3.1 variant.