Kingston DataTraveler 80 128Gb (DT80/128GB)

Ultra-compact USB-C flash drive

The Kingston DataTraveler 80 is Kingston's popular USB 3.2 gen1 USB 3.2 gen1 ultra-compact flash drive family. The compact cap design features a rugged body and a carabiner hole. A massive loop on one of the ends makes it possible to attach it to a keychain with a large or very large ring. Due to its miniature size (42.2x15x6.7 mm) and weight of about 4 grams, it is unlikely to get in the way, dangling on this very bunch of keys.

Faster than promised

With a very affordable price ($20 for 128 GB), Kingston DataTraveler 80 pleasantly surprised me with its speed. According to official figures, the buyer receives a peak of 200 MB / s when reading and 60 MB / s during writing. During paired tests in Crystal Disk Mark and ATTO Disk Benchmark, it turned out that the real speed performance of the model exceeds the claimed one and a half to two times, reaching 280 MB / s and 190 MB / s when reading and writing.

Minor throttling issues

At the same time, speed drops during reading were insignificant, but when writing a large photo archive, the speed graph had a wave-like shape, dropping from 190 to 67 MB / s, which indicates a slight throttling. Apparently, Kingston decided not to pretend that this is a feature, not a bug, so out of harm's way they lowered the passport speed to 60 MB / s. Overall, this is one of the most interesting USB-C drives that combines compactness and high data transfer speed.