Patriot Supersonic Xpress 8GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive Model PSF8GXPUSB

Pros: It works as a flash drive.

Cons: The rebate process is a joke. I bought this back in December 2012. Submitted the rebate and according to the rebate form, it takes 8-12 weeks for the rebate to arrive. Well...my rebate was approved on Feb. 22, 2013 but it's now April and there's still no rebate. I called into the toll-free number on the rebate and was informed that it takes 8-12 weeks from the rebate approval date for the rebate. So that means it could take 1/2 a year for a $5 rebate. What a joke!

Other Thoughts: I think Patriot Memory is hoping that by delaying the rebate, they think consumers will eventually forget it and therefore will not have to mail it. I will think long and hard next time before buying anything from Patriot Memory.

Pros: Works as USB 2 drive

Cons: Never recognized by my Fresco Logic FL1000 controller, WD My Passport USB 3 HDD works fine with it. Works in USB 2.0 slot, but defeats the purpose of buying USB 3.0 flash drive.
Silly ballpoint-pen click-to-extend style retractor is unnecessarily complex and makes insertion more difficult, also seems a likely point of early failure.

Pros: cheap; ~50% faster usb3 read than usb2 for smaller block sizes.

Cons: usb3 write speeds about the same as usb2

Other Thoughts: Write speeds are about the same on usb3 as usb2. Read speeds are about 50% faster on usb3. I tested with HD Bench using 2, 10, and 100MB block sizes. The columns from left to right are read, write, random read, random write.


100MB
read write r read r write
33485 10568 31702 2881 usb2
42053 10336 37061 2955 usb3
20.37% -2.24% 14.46% 2.50%

10MB
33573 6904 29132 2757 usb2
81756 7366 51717 2865 usb3
58.94% 6.27% 43.67% 3.77%

2MB
30854 4602 27836 2569 usb2
57228 4753 50139 2622 usb3
46.09% 3.18% 44.48% 2.02%

Pros: It works

Cons: The store I bought it from listed read as 50MB/s and write as 20MB/s, I get exactly HALF that in a USB 3.0 port.

Other Thoughts: Worthless as a USB 3.0 drive since there are some USB 2.0 drives that are faster! Maybe it's just me and others will have better results but it's a big discrepancy. Needless to say, it's only worth the price of a CHEAP 2.0 drive.

Manufacturer Response:

Hello,

I'm sorry to hear that you had this issue with performance. Please note that our advertised performance is measured using ATTO benchmarks on the Intel X79 motherboards. Transfer speeds can vary if transferring multiple files and/or using a different platform. If you have any further questions please send me an e-mail: Support@Patriotmem.com and I'll be glad to assist you in the matter.

Thank you for choosing Patriot Memory!

Best Regards,
James
Patriot Memory Customer Care

Pros: great speed great size great price

Cons: feels cheep buy its holding up so far

Pros: Cheap pen drive, works fine and the desing is pretty and cool. USB 3. Loving it already and i am backing up my pictures, documents and everything on it.

Cons: Shipping to Puerto Rico is expensive for such a small item, is not Patriot or the manufacturer fault but just to let know. Still is a great pen drive for the money

Other Thoughts: Bough this and a Case fan to try newegg service for the first time and i am happy with it.

Pros: Great price, great speed. Able to transfer movies or programs from computers very quickly. I did not think I would notice the difference from USB 2.0 to 3.0, but man it is a lot faster.

Cons: None

Pros: It's fast and seems to work well. Only time will tell on reliability - always keep backups!

Cons: Feels cheap - click mechanism may break over short period of time. It is larger than i thought in dimension - even after comparing online before purchase.

Other Thoughts: Unfortunately there are not many options for USB 3.0 flash drives in regards to better design than this product in this price range.

Pros: I just want to say the writing speed in this review:

I measured the writing speed of few AVI files (one with 745 MB, the other with 1.53 GB) with my laptop (Dell XPS core i7 2820QM, 8GB RAM).
It took only 29 sec for 745MB avi file writing to this drive. For 1.53GB avi file transfer, it took 61 sec. The average transfer speed is 25+MB/sec. This speed shows significant improve over flash drives with USB 2.0.

I recommend flash drives with USB 3.0!!!!!

Cons: I didn't find any conc yet.

Other Thoughts: The writing speed may be different based on file types and computer specs.
For me, USB 3.0 VS. USB 2.0 = 25 MB/sec Vs. ~10 MB/sec.

Pros: In spite of being very skeptical about these push-spring type of USB drive, I bought one anyway thinking they would have gotten better over the years. For this one all I can say is that the memory chip works, but is useless because the spring lock mechanism broke after 3 uses, see cons below.

Cons: So after about 3 uses, the lock on the spring mechanism broke. I could press it out and it stayed. But as soon as I tried to insert it into a USB slot, it would pop back in. I emailed the Patriot RMA about the problem, and they promptly sent me a return label. I assumed I received a "new" drive a few weeks later. But no, it broke again after 1 attempt. Now unless there is a new way to insert USB drives into the slots, I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Did they even bother to send me a new one, or are all these drives so badly built?

This time around when I emailed them, they asked me to send pictures of the drive. Not sure what this would really achieve, I sent the photos anyway. It has been over a week and no reply whatsoever.

Oh btw, I tried calling their customer support toll free number and guess what, no one replies.

Other Thoughts: I've never tried other Patriot products, so I can't judge them. However considering the kind of poor service I'm receiving, I'm sure going to stay away from them.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Nihar,

I'm sorry to hear that you're having issues with the locking mechanism of your Supersonic Xpress drive. Please don't hesitate to e-mail me: support@patriotmem.com and I'll be glad to look into your issue or case status.

Regards,
Benjamin
Patriot Memory Customer Support