The ADATA DashDrive Elite S102 Pro is the simplest kind of Flash you will ever see, No rotating or sliding caps, no Keychain holes, Nothing. So what is its USP ? Affordable pricing, rugged Aluminium body and one of the best Read/Write speeds in this price band.

ADATA DashDrive Elite S102 Pro 64GB Flash Drive Review

ADATA Dashdrive Elite S102 comes in storage options ranging from 8GB to 64GB. The product page for this Flash drive on ADATA's website seems not updated as it lists the available options only from 8GB to 32GB. Ok so, this is not a review unit and I got it for my personal use and at a price of 30$(including a lifetime warranty). Read/write speeds of up to 150MB/s/50MB/s don't seem bad at all, infact they are one of the best. Ironically the product page lists the maximum speed low too, when everyone is upselling their products (ADATA please, take some time to update your website too).


Design and Build quality

The simplest design, simplified. As I mentioned above there is actually nothing extraordinary with the exteriors of the USB drive apart from its Titanium gray paint and Aluminium body.
You can close the cap on the back of the S102 Pro so that it doesn't go missing accidentally, the finish of the body is actually very comforting to touch and feels more "Premium" than gloss or Plastic bodies.


The port of this USB 3.0 flash drive is Blue, as it should be, with the model number etched in ridiculously small text on the side of port. The S102 Pro is slightly on the bigger side and fits perfectly in a medium sized palm. Personally I don't like the micro sized USB drives that people seem to like, as they are nowhere to be found when you need them most, in other words get misplaced.

Performance

The USB 3.0 read speeds can vary from 35-150 MB/s for your everyday use in USB 3.0 mode, and around 50 MB/s for write operations on same kind of files. Obviously the Read/Write speeds depend on kind of files so we did some tests using specific files to emulate daily use operations to help you get the speeds you will encounter with different kind of files.


The Read speeds for different kind of files varied mostly between 90-120 MB/s, the write speeds vary depending on different kind of files, for songs its around 35 MB/s, for Game backup files its at around 50 MB/s, and for Images its ~25 MB/s.

The only working con that I could see in this that it heats up to pretty high temperatures while its copying/writing files or is just connected to the PC.

Benchmarks

The CrystalDiskMark and ATTO Disk Benchmark tests for ADATA DashDrive Elite S102 Pro 64GB Flash Drive verify the findings about Read/Write speeds too.



Conclusion

For the price that I bought this for and the options available at this Price-band (~30$), I would recommend anyone looking for a daily use 64GB flash drive to buy ADATA DashDrive Elite S102 Pro. The Aluminium body offers the durability needed for daily use, and the speeds are not like its Higher price-band counterparts, but highly overshoot the standard set for a daily use, affordable Flash Drive.