I just received the newly released SanDisk 256GB Extreme Pro USB 3.1 Solid State Flash Drive and thought I’d quickly run it through its paces to compare with my trusty old SanDisk 32GB Extreme USB 3.0.
I did a couple of quick benchmarks to compare the speed of the old and new stick to see what sort of differences exist apart from the size of the drive. One set of benchmarks was conducted on a late 2015 27” full specced iMac and the other on a late 2016 13 MacBook Pro with touch bar (using an Apple USB A to C adapter).
iMac 27″ late 2015
Above: SanDisk 32GB Extreme USB 3.0 in Blackmagic Design’s disk speed test
Above: SanDisk 256GB Extreme Pro USB 3.1 in Blackmagic Design’s disk speed test
Above: SanDisk 32GB Extreme USB 3.0 in AJA’s disk speed test
Above: SanDisk 256GB Extreme Pro USB 3.1 in AJA’s disk speed test
Late 2016 13 MacBook Pro with touch bar
Above: SanDisk 32GB Extreme USB 3.0 in Blackmagic Design’s disk speed test
Above: SanDisk 256GB Extreme Pro USB 3.1 in Blackmagic Design’s disk speed test
As you can see in the screenshots, the new stick is a fair bit faster, but possibly more importantly, the write speed is basically equal the read speed which is great for someone like me who is often copying files on and off the drive.
Roughly averaged real-world speeds for the SanDisk 256GB Extreme Pro USB 3.1 were a read speed of 395MBps and a write speed of 327MBps.
The packaging is bare bones (basically like all of Sandisk’s memory card packing).
The drive is physically very similar to the older drive with only very slight differences in size. It’s a large drive in the scheme of things, but I’m happy with that considering the speed. The slide out USB A connector is solid and makes a satisfying “click” as it slides in and out.
While I didn’t quite achieve the advertised “Up to” read and write speeds, it’s certainly a bloody quick drive and will come in handy as an always on me method of moving large files via sneaker-net.
