Adata and Kingston USB 3 Flash Drives

Kingston DataTraveller Ultimate 3 Review

Manufacturer: Kingston
UK Price (as Reviewed): £48.99 (inc. VAT) for 16GB version (tested)
US Price (as Reviewed): $64.99 (ex. Tax)

Kingston's DataTraveller Ultimate 3 swaps long and slender for short and stubby, as it may only be 7cm long (plus 5mm for the cap), but it's a fat 17mm thick, which means it'll cover another USB slot sitting above, unless you arrange it so the Kingston drive sits at the top.


Kingston makes part of the casing out of brushed aluminium, but it's offset by more white plastic than Adata uses on its Nobility N005. There is an impressive five year warranty to back up the Kingston drive - that's more than we even get for hard drives and SSDs!

USB 3 provides more power than USB 2 and to some extent that's required by the DataTraveller Ultimate 3, as curiously Kingston throws in a 2-port USB 2 male to single-USB 3 female adapter in the package, just in case some USB 2 ports are not powerful enough. We didn't experience any issues in this regard with any of the USB 2 ports we tried it in, so clearly the power requirements aren't huge. Still, it's a good addition as some cases might use very cheap quality, higher resistance wiring to its front USB ports, which suffer from more significant power loss.


Like Adata, Kingston ships the drive in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB capacities, and claims a read performance of up to 80MB/sec and write of up to 60MB/sec via USB 3.

See how well this drive performs, and whether you should buy one, head to the Results Page.