AmazonBasics 16 GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive (Gray Blue)

 (83 customer reviews)

I was somewhat hesitant purchasing this drive, as there were no reviews yet. I was mostly interested in read/write speeds, as they weren't shown on the information page (or perhaps I missed it). For the 8 GB model, 7.53 GB are accessible, and the drive comes formatted in FAT32. I tried a few read/write tests, with digital camera RAW files. Copying around 7 GB resulted in a sustained write speed of 5.6 MB/sec, and sustained read speeds of the same files was around 28.6 MB/sec. I was impressed by the read speeds, but slightly disappointed in the write speeds. Granted I won't often be filling the drive up (which would take about 20 minutes), so it won't be too big of an issue, and for most data transfers I would not have benefited from any additional write speed.

Build quality is fairly impressive, as it's made mostly out of aluminum. It feels solid in my hands, and looks to be fairly durable. The ends are plastic though, but I don't think that matters much.

I...Read more

I purchased this 32G Amazon branded USB stick a month or two ago. It arrived just in time for my wife's laptop to crash. We threw Ubuntu on the stick and let her use it until we figured out how to get here restoration disks to work. In the mean time I edited some videos stored on the stick and have carried a lot on the stick. It works well and is fast like one would expect. However the real reason I'm writing the review is that this USB stick holds up to some abuse.
I took my kids to my parents house like usual on a Tuesday. Apparently I dropped the stick in their driveway. I didn't notice it missing because I was not using it at all that week. Dropping the kids again on Friday, I notices something in the driveway. It was my USB Sick, right in the track of where my mom backs her CRV our of the garage. The marks (scratches only) on the case suggest it was run over more that once. Besides all that it had rained and freezed several times during the week. I picked up the stick...Read more

Pretty zippy for an inexpensive memory stick. Real solid feel. No annoying LED blinking while writing or reading. Does have a removable cap that will probably get lost. Lanyard hole on end.

Speed test:

Writing speed: 7.88 MByte/s
Reading speed: 17.7 MByte/s