Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

What's Good (+) Well-built casing (+) Activity indicator light present (+) Design allows for a lanyard to be attached (+) USB 3.0 read speeds... What Raises the Eyebrow (-) ...but USB 2.0 write speeds Overall: Two stars. Ticks all the checkboxes on the hardware side, but poor write performance makes it an overall difficult proposition for a USB 3.0 flash drive recommendation Note: This review is based on the 16GB version If you've arrived here from my SanDisk Cruzer Blade (SanDisk Cruzer Blade 16GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive) review, the first thing that you'd want to note that this SanDisk Ultra USB 3.0 fixes the most glaring hardware issues I had with the Cruzer Blade. The fit is more generous and it has a flashing orange activity indicator in the body of the flash drive, only visible when it is connected to the PC. Similar to the Cruzer Blade, the SanDisk Ultra's design allows for a lanyard to be attached to it by means of an opening at one end of the flash drive. Unlike the one-piece design of the Cruzer Blade though, the SanDisk Ultra has a retracting mechanism for the metal USB header, housed in a well-built plastic casing. The SanDisk Ultra is slightly larger however, measuring at about 5cm (2") long compared to the Cruzer Blade's 4cm (1.6"); this may be an issue if you use a laptop with exceptionally low ground clearance for the USB ports though I have yet to encounter one. At the end of my Cruzer Blade review, I mentioned that an extra few dollars for its price will buy you a USB 3.0 capable flash drive. This SanDisk Ultra is among one of them, but there's a huge catch; the USB 3.0 speeds are one-way only. In my general use, the read speeds, copying files from the flash drive to the PC, are indeed USB 3.0 standards, averaging around 75 MB/s. However, the write speeds, copying files from the PC to the flash drive, are atrocious, averaging around 8 - 11 MB/s. I expect those write speeds in a decent USB 2.0 flash drive, not one that advertises itself as USB 3.0 capable. I almost thought I had plugged the flash drive to the wrong port but nope, it's from the same port that achieved the 75 MB/s read speeds. For background information, if you Google search "USB 2.0 speed", the first entry states that the maximum theoretical speed for a USB 2.0 transfer is 60 megabytes per second (MB/s). So if I'm achieving 75 MB/s read speeds, the SanDisk Ultra is indeed connected via a USB 3.0 channel, but the write speeds are painfully limited at the USB 2.0 range. SanDisk does make a distinction between read and write speeds and you may argue that I am indeed receiving USB 3.0 capabilities from this drive as promised in the description, where there is an explicit numerical rate attached only for the read speeds. However, I at least expect some sort of upgrade in all performance aspects, not just simply maintaining parity with existing standards; even only achieving a modest upgrade to 16 - 18 MB/s average write speeds, which is slow for USB 3.0 standards, would go a long way in my consumer satisfaction. This SanDisk Ultra is indeed a better device in the context of a direct replacement for my Cruzer Blade, but I do not like the marketing doublespeak on the performance capabilities of this drive. If you're going to market your product as USB 3.0 capable, I don't want to have to second guess and read all the fine print on the specific, exact instances where the capability applies. All I ask for is a reasonable performance upgrade from existing USB 2.0 drives; I'd be more than satisfied with a drop in the read speeds to around 55 MB/s in exchange for an increase in write performance to 16 MB/s. There is a faster USB 3.0 flash drive also by SanDisk (SanDisk Extreme CZ80 16GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive Transfer Speeds Up To 245MB/s- SDCZ80-016G-GAM46 [Newest Version]), but again, it costs another additional few dollars and these dollars add up and will soon price itself out of my budget appetite for these type of flash drives. I will continue using this SanDisk Ultra, but given its USB 2.0 write speeds, I may as well look for one of those USB 2.0 flash drives with the dual regular and micro-USB form factor for use with my smartphone. At the very least, this product redeems the SanDisk brand out of my avoid list.