I like PNY's affordable dual-connector flash drive, but I wish it was faster

Price When Reviewed

256GB: $34 I 512GB: $53 I 1TB: $86 I 2TB: $167

Best Prices Today: PNY Duo Link V3

With at this time’s mixture of legacy Type-A and newer Type-C ports, it pays to have the ability to hook up with each. However, adapters have this nasty behavior of being misplaced, so a tool that has each connector sorts captive on board, such because the PNY Duo Link V3 reviewed right here, can prevent a whole lot of grief.

The caveat right here is write efficiency, which falls off a cliff when you run out of secondary cache. For most eventualities, this received’t come into play, but it surely did in our testing — so learn that part fastidiously.

Note: If your nonetheless leveraging older Apple gadgets with a Lightning connector — then look to a few of PNY’s older Duo Links that are Lighting/Type-A.

What are the PNY Duo Link V3’s options?

First and foremost, the Duo Link V3 is an 10Gbps USB SSD. I get the query on a regular basis: What’s the distinction between an SSD and a flash/thumb drive. Form issue — nothing else, although the latter do are typically a bit mild in efficiency. As SSD stands for stable state storage, and thumb drives have all the time used NAND, they’re legitimately SSDs.

Beyond that, the Duo Link is an roughly 2-inch lengthy black rectangle of an SSD that swivels in a really stable metallic sleeve to disclose both its Type-A or Type-C connector (lead picture), or each (the above picture), when you so want. There are tiny stops so the drive clicks in place at 180, 360, or 90 levels.

Weight is a mere 1.5 ounces, although that feels fairly stable given the small dimension. I do have a few nits in regards to the design. One or each of the connectors are all the time uncovered, leaving them prey to the weather. Also, the drive suits slightly loosely within the shell and I’m not 100 p.c optimistic in regards to the long-term prospects of the swivel/cease mechanism.

PNY by no means clued me in on the kind of NAND and controller chip on board, and I used to be detest to interrupt out my hammer. Whatever they’re, they’re positive for regular obligation.

How a lot does the PNY Duo Link V3 price?

The Duo Link is out there in 256GB/$34, 512GB/$53, 1TB/$86 (examined), and 2TB/$167 capacities. That’s fairly darn inexpensive for an SSD, or flash drive. But once more, learn the efficiency part fastidiously — you’ll perceive a minimum of a part of the rationale the Duo Link V3 is so low-cost.

How quick is the PNY Duo Link V3?

The PNY Duo Link V3 is your regular 10Gbps USB performer studying, and writing — with smaller quantities of information, as much as round 240GB with our 1TB take a look at unit.

But when you exceed the quantity of secondary cache whereas writing as we did within the 450GB write, it morphs into the slowest SSD I’ve ever examined — by rather a lot.

But first, light-duty efficiency. As you possibly can see beneath, CrystalDiskMark 8 rated the Duo Link V3’s sequential switch velocity as proper according to the thumb drive competitors.

Random efficiency can be fairly sprightly in accordance the CrystalDiskMark 8, cleansing the SK Hynix T31’s clock. By the way in which, until acknowledged in any other case, the ATTO and AS SSD benchmarks are roughly in settlement with CrystalDiskMark 8 numbers we submit.

When solely transferring 48GB price of information, the Duo Link V3 was proper up there with its rivals on the chart: the Seagate Ultra Compact SSD and SK Hynix T31.

As famous, after secondary cache is exhausted the Duo Link V3 goes south to a level I’ve by no means seen earlier than. I spent the higher a part of the day working the 450GB write exams, the quickest of which was barely below two hours. By manner of comparability, the slowest arduous drive I’ve examined took solely 75 minutes and the earlier slowest SSD (one other thumb drive), 52 minutes.

Speed began at close to 650MBps, then after roughly 250GB had been written, dropped to and vacillated between 15MBps and 100MBps — principally in the direction of the previous. This is remarkably sluggish for any kind of NAND, even QLC.

The 450GB write end result ruined the drive’s total ranking, however to be truthful, the Duo Link V3 is about light-duty comfort, not heavy-duty workloads. I’ll forgive it — and by no means attempt to write 450GB to it once more.

Note that each the Seagate Ultra Compact and SK Hynix T31 have been 2TB, whereas the PNY Duo Link V3 was solely a 1TB drive. Quite seemingly the 2TB capability of the Duo Link V3 would’ve turned in a time aggressive with the opposition — and tanked proper after that.

On the plus aspect, the PNY Duo Link V3 recovered shortly after slowdowns — i.e., subsequent writes would proceed apace after a couple of minutes of relaxation. Also, few customers will ever write 450GB of contiguous information. We do for the particular goal of discovering the NAND’s native write charge.

Should you purchase the PNY duo hyperlink V3?

For most customers, the comfort of the Duo Link V3’s dual-connectivity will outweigh doable points with lengthy writes they could by no means carry out. For mild obligation, it’s positive.

If, nevertheless, you often write giant quantities of information, say over 25 p.c of no matter capability you purchase, then search one other answer.

How we take a look at

Drive exams at the moment make the most of Windows 11 24H2, 64-bit working off of a PCIe 4.0 Samsung 990 Pro in an Asus Z890-Creator WiFi (PCIe 4.0/5.0) motherboard. The CPU is a Core Ultra i5 225 feeding/fed by two Kingston Fury 32GB DDR5 4800MHz modules (64GB of reminiscence complete). Both 20Gbps USB and Thunderbolt 5 are built-in and Intel CPU/GPU graphics are used. SSDs concerned within the take a look at are mounted in a HighPoint 7604A 16x PCIe 5.0 adapter card.

We run the CrystalDiskMark 8, AS SSD 2, and ATTO 4 artificial benchmarks to seek out the storage machine’s potential efficiency, then a sequence of 48GB and 450GB transfers exams utilizing Windows Explorer drag and drop to indicate what you’ll see below Window, in addition to the far quicker Xcopy to indicate what’s doable.

The 48GB switch exams make the most of an USFMount RAM disk taking over 58GB of the 64GB of complete reminiscence. The 450GB file is transferred from one other SSD on the HighPoint card.

Each take a look at is carried out on a newly NTFS-formatted and TRIM’d drive so the outcomes are optimum. Note that in regular use, as a drive fills up, efficiency could lower as a result of much less NAND for secondary caching, in addition to different components. This might be much less of an element with the present crop of SSDs with far quicker late-generation NAND.

Caveat: The efficiency numbers proven apply solely to the drive we have been shipped and to the capability examined. SSD efficiency can and can differ by capability as a result of extra or fewer chips to shotgun reads/writes throughout and the quantity of NAND obtainable for secondary caching. Vendors additionally often swap elements. If you ever discover a big discrepancy between the efficiency you expertise and that which we report, by all means, tell us.