Patriot SuperSonic Magnum 256GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive Review

Updated: March 4, 2013

In the ever-growing mobile world, the need for fast and reliable external storage is at the pinnacle of its life cycle and many companies are vying for your dollar. The thing is, how does one choose the proper product without needing a PHD in technology to do so? and are the speeds of the drive up to their maximum abilities with the technology available today? Patriot is one of the premiere memory companies on the map today and we have used their products in many builds and have found the company to be solid, trustworthy and customer oriented which are all good things for the end-user like you and I.

On my desk today I have the latest and greatest in mobile storage by the good folks at Patriot and that product is their Supersonic Magnum 256GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive which offers immense storage in a very small package. Being that the new Magnum is based off the USB 3.0 standard, it should be very fast in both the read and write speed departments, but not all drives do what they say and that is what we are here today to find out about. The Magnum also claims to work well with both Macs and PCs and other products we have tested have usually preferred one or the other, but not usually both are up to the same speeds. The reasons behind this are probably associated with the controller being used as this can have a huge impact on how well the drive performs.

The Magnum utilizes 8-Channel technology and contains the Phison PS2251-01 controller on one side as well as 64GB of NAND Flash memory on the other. The memory being used is labeled TU89G2LAKA and is made by Toshiba. One thing to note is that the outer casing is made of Aluminum and can withstand up to 15Gs of pressure so its made to be tough and durable. The outside casing is a very nice blue and black, while the body of the Magnum is 10mm thick, making it one of the thickest of its type. The overall size of the Magnum is 79mm X 27mm, so you can see it’s not trying to be super sleek and thin by any means. You can clearly see the nomenclature on one side, the Patriot Logo on the other, there is a pop top lid that comes off easily enough, but also seems to seal the drive just fine as well, but being plastic that might change or you may accidentally misplace it someday. The prices on these drives depends on their size but start off at 64GB ($69.99) and go up to 256GB ($299.99) like the one we are testing today and there’s also a 128GB model that retails for $137.99.

For Windows testing I used a variety of things to measure how well the Patriot Supersonic Magnum does in real world environments and those tests include ATTO, which is a very standard test for determining your read and write speeds, CrystalDiskMark, which uses a set of random data to also measure your drives performance and Disk Bench, which is a program that tells you how fast files are being transferred between drives, which is the most common thing all users do with their external storage devices. Most people fail to realize that Windows 8 has built into the OS the native capability of USB attached SCSI or UASP that allows for much faster USB 3.0 performance. In the end it come down to this: If you need a high capacity Flash Drive that is fast as well as portable, the Supersonic Magnum although not thee fastest drive we have ever tested it still holds its own in the speed department. At $299.99 for the 256GB model, the Price may be daunting to some, but if you do the math its $1.17 dollars a GB that is not really over the top and fits the pricing scale for this technology. You also get a 5-year warranty that will come in handy if something should happen to the drive and need a new one fast. Patriot has offices worldwide to accommodate your RMA exchange, which makes support that much easier to deal with.

The first test that I ran was ATTO and you can see from the screenshot that the performance on the Magnum is very fast with Read speeds of 265MB/s and Write speeds of 109MB/s, and with CrystalMark the Magnum scored 262MB/s Read and 176MB/s write. For transferring files from drive to drive I used Disk Bench and a 1.56GB transfer from my main hard drive and onto the Patriot Magnum and the transfer rate was 145MB/s and the file took 9593 milliseconds to complete, which is very fast I tried larger 32 and 64GB files and the rates were about the same across the board. I know that many of my readers are not concerned with how well the drive works in the Mac environment, but the drive had no real performance increases or decreases and ran about the same speeds as on a PC. Obviously the plastic cab may become less and less viable as the unit gets older, but hopefully it will maintain a fit for the Magnum throughout its lifetime. As far as the warranty goes you get a 5-year warranty on the Magnum in case of failure or damage and Patriot has a very good turn around on their RMA in case something does happen. High-capacity Flash drives are still at a premium price as the technology is still growing and expanding and has not yet reached a plateau where prices are competitive. The Patriot SuperSonic Magnum is a very small, but also very effective tool for the traveling businessman who needs fast and reliable storage. The product is a definite Editors Choice in the mobile storage category as it does what it says and says what it does pretty accurately from what our tests have shown.