Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Anyone being overly critical of this thumb-drive is being overly critical. It's very fast - It may not be the fastest USB 3.0 flash available, but its intention isn't to be the fastest but small and resilient. That doesn't mean its not fast... it blazes through a Flashbench and pulls some great RW speeds. The size is a little bigger than the equivalent san disk 32GB that I currently have jammed into my Roku3. While the SanDisk has a lower profile, the Samsung FIT’s edges are easier for my extra-large hands to pull out without tools. The SanDisk also gets blazing hot, while the Samsung tends to run a little cooler in my experience. Both are great drives. The 5 Proof claims…. Yup... I tested it. #1 - Temperature proof??? The specs say that it will withstand -10C ~70C (14F to 158F) of non-operating temperature. 0C~60C (32F to 140F) operating. This seemed to be a safe first test. The easiest real world example would be to leave this in your car in the dead of winter, then take it into the house and use it. I used my Samsung refrigerator/freezer (coincidence) and dropped it into the Ice-tray for the day. I did not bag it since it’s supposed to be waterproof and real world is going to give you moisture in the cold. Getting home I pulled the FIT out of the freezer, examined quickly for ice chips, and without any attempt at warming it up, jammed it to my laptop USB 3.0 port. The Fit drive came up immediately and I ran another flashbench… only a slight variation in speed, nothing to write home about. It works and it heated up to be warm to the touch on removal and examination. Next test… heat. The real world example would be to leave this inside your car in the summer. I used a laser thermometer and a heat gun on low to heat up the Fit on my granite counter. I brought the temperature to 150F and then let it cool to 130F before inserting into the laptop. Again. the memory worked fine. The test passed, but at the higher temp, there was a slight off gassing of a plastic smell, without any visible melting. #2 – Shock Proof – I looped a nylon lanyard to the Fit and attached it to my keychain. I figured that this is a likely shock test, since its designed to be pocket carried and has a lanyard hole. I can’t image the acceleration 1500g (gravity) for .5ms specification is referring only to a 1.5-meter freefall, since we certainly expect most solid state usb drives to survive that. Adding the additional keychain weight and a “off the table” drop was a better test. So… dropping onto ceramic tile is the least forgiving surface I have. 20 pushes off the table attached to a 7 key, keychain… still works fine. The plastic didn’t separate from the metal and the metal wasn’t out of shape. #3 Waterproof – here’s a fun one. Real world example may be it falling out of your pocket in the rain, suffering a drink spill, going through your washing machine, or the favorite cell phone death, falling into the toilet. None of these real world examples is taking a bath with your memory or dropping it into a glass of water for hours, so I shoved it into my Samsung Steam Washer (just a coincidence… believe me) inside a pair of jeans in a full load of laundry. Now I’ve probably done this with others as an accident maybe 2-3 times… and have lost memory before like that. This is probably the most common. A standard cycle of hot water, minor high efficiency detergent, spin cycle, and done. The memory came out the jeans damp. I used my hair dryer (not heat gun) to dry it off and warm it up a little to evaporate excess water. PASSED! Putting into my laptop 15 minutes after drying, it works fine. #4 Magnetic Proof - Accidentally leaving it near a magnetic field, magnets, etc. Well flash drives aren’t magnetic media like a (gasp) floppy drive or traditional hard drive. They use floating gate transistors (silicon) to store your data, so yea, you can put a handful of those super powerful earth magnets that you use to tack up charts to your cubicle bins without a problem. To prove the point, I loaded an audiobook (MP3) to the drive and jammed about 100 of those tiny powerful magnets in my pocket. Nothing… it’s non-impacting because of its design, not because of any shielding. Only a fluctuating magnetic field, such as a MRI, would impact. And it would erase the drive, but destroy the circuits – just like any other device. Which is why they ask you to remove all flash drives from your pockets during an MRI (LOL). #5 X-rays. Since Superman wasn’t available, your real world question of x-rays revolves around airport scanning and x-ray devices to check your bag before getting to your gate. This is another “given” for Samsung since they don’t really have to do anything to make a flash drive x-ray damage proof. The probability of an x-ray ionizing the floating gate is close enough to zero that there is no risk. Silicon is extremely transparent to x-rays at low thickness. I do fly often, and all of my usb sticks survive that scanning regularly. This is an acceptable marketing claim because its true for this FIT drive... but also true for everyone else’s USB flash too. So the Samsung FIT is 5-way tough. or 5-proof. Marketing… Benchmarks blaze… love this thing… Benchmark using FlashBench.EXE: Model: Samsung Flash Drive FIT Vendor: SAMSUNG Product: FLASH_DRIVE_FIT Revision: 1100 File system: FAT32 Size: 30584 MB Read speed: 146.70 MB/s Write speed: 99.60 MB/s In summary - It’s a great USB drive. Runs cooler, and is very resilient. In choosing either the SanDisk or Samsung. Unless you have a size preference, buy whatever one is on sale – both excellent products.