Kingston microDuo 32GB

Kingston microDuo - Introduction USB flash drives, can anyone imagine life without one? These devices are so intertwined with modern computing that terms like 'ubiquitous' do not even begin to describe the market penetration this class of device has. Honestly over the years we have owned dozens if not hundreds of these nifty little storage devices. However with so many models, capacities and options to choose from it is rather hard for a particular model to stand out from the crowd. The Kingston DataTraveler microDuo 3C on the other hand, actually does just that - so much so we requested a sample to review. After all it is not exactly every day that you see a USB flash drive built with such different design goals. No matter what you consider as standard features, this model breaks the mold. First and foremost this drive is a USB 3.1 equipped storage device and not a USB 3.0 model. With the advent of USB 3.1 it was inevitable that USB 3.1 flash drives would soon start appearing. What was not expected was that ultra-portable flash drives would lead the charge. After all, a flash drive that is not much bigger than a quarter does not sound like a great match for cutting edge 10gb/s performance that USB 3.1 has to offer. That however is exactly what the Kingston DataTraveler microDuo 3C is: a USB 3.1 flash drive that is so small it comes with a lanyard so you will not lose it! This however is only the tip of the iceberg with this model and what makes the Kingston Duo series really interesting and attention getting is the fact that this USB drive is not only small, but extremely versatile. In this case it means offering not only USB 3.1 Type-C port for portable devices, but also a more standard Type-A port. This combination allows this device to work with everything from USB 2.0 equipped laptops to cutting edge USB 3.1 devices and everything in between. However, since this device is so small its internal capacity is also very limited. Specifically this device only has room for one NAND IC and one USB 3.1 controller - and maybe room for a small amount of RAM cache. As we all know it is NAND interleaving that makes solid state drives fast and as such, it will be interesting to see exactly how fast this USB 3.1 model really is. What is known is that this drive offers scads of value as this new model only has an online asking price of $15 USD - or 47 cents per GB. It is this combination of price, versatility, and value that Kingston is counting on to make the new microDuo 3C a worthy addition to their legendary DataTraveler series. Kingston microDuo - Specs and Features Kingston microDuo - Closer Look Kingston has opted for a standard clear plastic 'clamshell' package for their DataTraveler microDuo 3C. We dislike clamshells as a rule, and as such dislike seeing it here; however for the intended market it does make sense. Basically it keeps the overall price down, while still providing 'good enough' protection. On the truly positive side, consumers can easily judge the size of this drive - as it can be seen right through the packaging! Kingston's DataTraveler series has always been known as Kingston's more portable solution tailor made for consumers who are regularly on the go and want portable storage for their tablet, smartphone and even UltraPortable PC. The DataTraveler microDuo 3C is no exception to this legacy and in fact adds to it. As you can see this little 32GB device is downright tiny . So tiny that we actually shoot cast bullets (aka boolits) that are bigger. So much so we had an almost irresistible urge to pull off the plastic cap, paper patch it, load it over 55grains of IMR3031 and use it in our 45-70! Seriously it is that small. Take a look at the above picture, on the left you have a MBC 405gr 'Buffalo #1' that is meant for "large Buffalo". On the right is a 420gr WLFNGC meant for…well… anything you want to put down in a hurry. In the center is the DataTraveler microDuo 3C! That is pretty much the epitome of 'small' when it comes to external flash storage. This flash drive is so small that Kingston actually includes a lanyard so that you can put it on your keychain. We strongly recommend that you do so as the downside to owning such an itty bitty powerhouse is that losing it is also a very real possibility. On the positive side this little device still does come with 32GB (a bit better than 30GiB) of useable space which is more than enough for even the longest of trips. More importantly this flash drive is On The Go (OTG) complaint and as such is seen as just another 'externalSD' device by Android devices. We personally were able to put two large movies, two seasons of a TV show…and three full audiobooks on this little bad boy - and we still had room left over for a couple hundred ebooks. Put another way this combined with the typical tablet or phone means you will never have to use your cellphone's data plan to download multimedia. Instead fill it up before you leave the house, and then enjoy your entertainment anywhere at any time. Now this drive is not simply a portable device meant to keep you from racking up a hundred dollar cellphone bill. No this model is called the microDuo for a reason. We have already explained the first half of the name, but the second is just as (and maybe more) critical to understanding this drive. You see this drive is not just meant for ease of use while on the go, and instead is meant to be easy to use anywhere at any time. In order to do this Kingston has included not one but two USB ports. One end is your typical full sized USB Type-A port and if you leaver up the see-through plastic end cap you will see that there is also a Type-C port as well! The only issues we have with this dual approach is the fact that this is a USB 3.1 device and Type-C ports are not backwards compatible with mini or micro USB 3/2 ports. What this means is that while this drive can be used with any tablet or PC that is USB 3.1 capable it will not work with older tablets or phones without an adapter. Kingston could have alleviated this issue by included an adapter for the Type-C port, but this would have increased the size, and cost of this unit. On the positive side it is a USB 3.1 device and as such is pretty much future proofing in a nutshell. USB's 3.1 Type-C port is quickly gaining momentum and is poised to be the port of choice for all future tablets and phones - even ThunderBolt III uses it (and has USB 3.1 compatibility baked right into the standard) . This will not help people with circa 2015 or earlier devices, but as time goes by will be less and less of an issue. The issue is the end cap is not meant to be reversible. Instead it just levers up 90-degrees to expose the USB 3.1 Type-C port. This is all well and fine when dealing with say laptops which have a fairly standard orientation - as the cap will be pointed upwards. However, when it comes to tablets and smart phones we as consumers are not so lucky. Take for instance the Samsung Tab S8.4 and the Google (ASUS built) Nexus 7. On one the USB 2.0 port is orientated downwards and on the other is orientated upwards! This means that if this trend of willy-nilly orientation carries over to the next generation that you will not be able to leave every tablet or phone lying flat on a table while this drive is plugged in. Luckily a quick tug with a pair of plyers will remove this end cap - with no detriment to the drive itself. Kingston microDuo - Testing Methodology The reasons to purchase a flash drive are as varied as the consumers who purchase them. For some read performance matters, for others it is read performance, for others still it is small file performance that is paramount. With such a wide variety of criteria it behooves us to offer a variety of test suites that focus in on different things. For synthetic tests we used a combination of the AS-SSD and Crystal Disk Benchmark. For real world (non-gaming orientated) testing we have used timed data transfer scenarios. For these tests we timed how long a single 30GB rar file took to copy to and then from the devices. We also used 15gb of small files (from 100kb to 200MB) with a total 36,000 files in 1200 subfolders. All tests were run 4 times and average results are represented. To ensure optimum performance in between each test run the device was sanitary erased. Main Test System Processor: Intel i7 5930K Memory: 32GB (4x8GB) Crucial Ballistic Elite Motherboard: Asus Sabertooth X99 Cooling: Noctua U12S SSD: 1x Intel 750 1.2TB NVMe SSD Power Supply: Corsair AX860i Monitor: Dell U2714H OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64 SP1 Special thanks to Crucial for providing the RAM for this testbed Kingston microDuo - Crystal Diskmark Crystal DiskMark is designed to quickly test the performance of your hard drives. Currently, the program allows to measure sequential and random read/write speeds; and allows you to set the number of tests iterations to run. We left the number of tests at 5 and size at 100MB. Kingston microDuo - AS-SSD AS-SSD is designed to quickly test the performance of your drives. Currently, the program allows us to measure sequential and small 4K read/write speeds as well as 4K file speed at a queue depth of 6. While its primary goal is to accurately test Solid State Drives, it does equally well on all storage mediums it just takes longer to run each test as each test reads or writes 1GB of data. Kingston microDuo - Real World Data Transfers No matter how good a synthetic benchmark like IOMeter is, it cannot really tell you how your hard drive will perform in “real world” situations. To this end we will be running timed data transfers to give you a general idea of how its performance relates to real life use. To help replicate worse case scenarios we will transfer a 30.00GB contiguous file, then a folder containing 1200 subfolders with a total 36,000 files varying in length from 200mb to 100kb (15.00 GB total). Testing will include transfer to and transferring from the devices, using MS RichCopy and logging the performance of the drive. Here is what we found. Kingston microDuo - Performance Summary In an effort to make sorting through all the results as easy as possible we have combined the results all of all the test results into an easy to digest summary format. By comparing this drive to similar products in all the various tests you will be able to easily find the result(s) you are interested in, see the improvement and decide if this model is worth the investment. Obviously the form-factor is the limiting factor here when it comes to performance, but by the same token these speeds make the DataTraveler microDuo 3C a viable contender. Put simply this drive offers more than enough speed in a package that is pretty much as small as you can find - and still have two ports. Kingston microDuo - TL;DR & Closing Statement Performance : 30 out of 40. While there are indeed faster options available the DT microDuo 3C offers decent performance given its rather small form-factor. Basically if you need more speed you will need to go to a bigger, more bulkier series. Technological Innovation: 19 out of 20 This drive may not be overflowing with performance but great googly moogly is it ever overflowing with technological innovation! This drive not only offers Type-A and Type-C compatibility but does both in a form-factor that is not bigger than the size of these two ports placed end to end! Build Quality & Warranty: 17 out of 20 The only area we can ding this drive is with its end cap. That end cap only protects the Type-C port and can block adjacent ports. That is an issue that could have been avoided with a different design. On the positive side it is still useable, and this drive does come with a 5 year warranty. Value: 18 out of 20 This drive easily justifies an asking price that is as small as its form-factor. Final Score: 84 out of 100 TL;DR What this drive lacks in performance it more than makes up for in compactness. As long as you have a device that can take advantage of its interface type this drive will provide you with very good performance for years to come. Closing Statement It makes perfect sense to us that portable devices would be leading the charge for USB 3.1; after all this one seemingly simple little port opens up a whole new world of possibilities for portable device manufactures. After all Type-C ports offers not only charging abilities that are insane but allows for such a massive bandwidth pipe that things like HDMI and DisplayPorts become redundant. However, while Type-C is on its way to becoming the de-facto port of the future, its future on the Desktop is a bit more murky to say the least - as it drops all backwards compatibility. Instead the classic Type-A port is still going to be king. This is doubling of necessary is why we actually like what Kingston has done with their new DataTraveler microDuo 3c series. Yes the integrated cap only protects the Type-C port and can block adjacent ports, but its Type-A port is backwards compatible to USB 3.0 and USB 2.0, and this one-two combination means this little bad boy can easily be used on darn near any system. Of course with that being said this still is as single controller, single NAND IC based device and as such its performance is limited to well below what larger USB 3.0 flash drives can offer. By the same token having 32GB of storage in a package about the size of a quarter combined with 100+ MB/s performance is more than enough for the typical consumer and the typical scenario. All that remains is for the rest of the market to catch up with it and offer Type-C enabled portable devices - Kingston already has the perfect device for them! This unfortunately is the crux of the problem with the microDuo right now - it's too forward thinking. Kingston may have been better served by making one end a Type-C port and the other a micro-USB port. Yes this would have decrease compatibility with desktop systems (and necessitated the use of an adapter) but it would have made this device much more versatile right now . Of course with an asking price so low, there is very little risk involved in purchasing this little bad boy now, and waiting for compatible tablets and phones to appear. After all, they are coming, and as such maybe…just maybe, using a Type-A + Type-C interface will be seen as genius in retrospect. In the meantime this drive may nto be right for everyone, but everyone who does purchase it now will not be disappointed in what it has to offer now and in the near future.

No Result