Micro Center Super Speed 5 Pack 16GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive Gum Size Memory Stick Thumb Drive Data Storage Jump Drive

I've bought microcenter's store brand usb drives since the days when 16 GB was bleeding edge, and with a few exceptions, I've found them cost effective, reliable (any flash stick can fail, but I've had only a couple of failed drives of several dozen over the years) and decent speed. This current generation I find writes at about 4 megaBYTES per second and read at around 30. I offer one warning about the microcenter brand: From time to time they seem to switch manufacturers; whoever they've used for years makes drives with transparent, tinted shells and activity LEDs. This is the kind we're discussing here, and I recommend them without reservation. On occasion they offer a batch from someone else, detectable by opaque, pastel colored shells and no activity light. I've found the 256 pastel versions work with some PCs, but are not detected by others. Recently, they've offered pastel 512's, also without activity light: the 512's I won't even buy, so I can't comment on whether they're imperfectly compatible like the 256's I have tried. I do not recommend the pastel style drives. These are the tinted/LED style I do recommend. Just be careful you're getting the tinted style; they sometimes don't make the difference clear on their own web site (show photos of the tinted style but actually sell the pastel style.) To summarize, these are the tinted/LED style, and I recommend them without reservation.

These work great. Glad I ordered so many.

WAS AS DESCRIBED

have had to upgrade most of my previous 16GB flash drives to 32GB or more. loved that this was a bundle of 2 at $10 which was same price for 2 of the 16GB versions. As I routinely buy these when I am at the MicroCenter in Madison Heights, MI, i would buy 1 or 2 on occasion at the store. Here on Amazon they are a bit lower cost. I plan to buy the 5 pack next time around. they come ready to use in Fat32 format for most windows PC's and work properly on my older Mac as well. Only wish there was a version that had the USB-A & USB-C. I normally use these to either use as a Windows Boot USB, or a Linux Boot USB, or as a Music MP3 drive for use in my car.

How can I not love this? (Well, them, as it's a twofer in one plastic wrap.) I've been remiss, as I'd not reviewed this (well, these, as I ordered a handful) when it first arrived, for a variety of excuses, none of which had much to do with anything other than sloth. Instead, I merely dropped them in my drawer with all the other memory sticks of much lesser capacity. Those, typically in the 2GB range, were mostly for me to pass various small (well, relatively speaking; if it were text, they could consume days' worth of reading) bundles of data to friends and colleagues in the cruising community (I lived and cruised on a sailboat for 15 years). However, recently, I got involved in a technical discussion of how to make sure the fuel being used was free of anything which might deter transfer from tank to engine (diesel fuel is prone to succumbing to lots of ways to impede flow, particularly on sailboats where it may not get a lot of turnover). My solution was to have made a fuel polisher. I'll save you the technical discussion regarding those and the process, as it would bore you to tears. What likely is of direct interest, however, is what happened next... I'm a bit anal about recording stuff which is complicated, and which I might have to do again, as I'm doing it the first time. Accordingly, there were double-digit gigabytes of photos of my solution to engine-mounted filter changes (to construct and install a fuel polishing system) resting comfortably in my computer, in their own file, awaiting just such a moment: "AHA," sez I, "I have just the thing!" and proceeded to tell them about my method to insure pristine fuel delivery regardless of whatever calumny might have occurred in their tank. In my case, my polishing system meant that in 15 years of cruising, I never had to change an engine fuel filter - while my polishing filters got changed 4 times (they're enormous by comparison), pulling out the gunge and critters which had been removed before the tank delivered the junk to the engine. But I digress. I ordered these more than two years ago. Most of the other sticks in my drawer, in the marine (salt water) environment, had accumulated a variety of rust on the part which goes into the computer. As the electrical contacts are gold, it's of little electronic issue, but they can also accumulate other grunge, which IS of issue. However, they weren't nearly sufficient to carry all the data in my photo gallery (you knew I'd get here, right?), so I reached for one of these. Off pops the cover. BRILLIANT!! (Yes, that's a Britishism, an approximation of which is "Bravo!!" - which also applies here...) The business end of the memory stick looked like it was just out of the factory, instead of having sat in a salt-water-infused atmosphere for two years. My computer has a solid state drive, and the usual USB 3.x ports. These sticks, despite being a couple of years old, are also USB 3.x enabled... So, to the title of my review: I inserted the stick. "Bing! New device recognized." I highlighted the file with all the pictures of my construction and installation of my computer, right-clicked 'copy,' and moved my cursor over to the "F:\" 32GB flash drive, right clicked 'paste' and before I'd lifted my finger, "BING! Transfer complete..." My inexpensive flash drive had sucked up 15 GB of photos before I had time to watch the process. A pair - depending on your color preference - at under or just barely over ten bux. What's not to like? Better yet, if you're a high-transfer kinda user: Do as I did, and order a 10-pack, for under $4 each (33.99 as I write this review), with no difference in cost for your favorite color...

You get exactly what you pay for with this product, reliable and useable with good transfer speeds, small form factor, and the cap style is underrated, well made product.

I do some light file transfers from time to time. I need USB drives for copying some documents or making bootable USB sticks for reinstalling stuff. I like to use these USB drives for lighter file transfers stuff 1GB and under. Overall the sticks are pretty slow with regards to their speed of writing data they write at about 4-15 megabytes per second. It's not amazingly fast, but it gets the job done. Getting for USB sticks for $20 or so was a steal. If you're doing heavy file transfers of 10-20gb this will be pretty slow at writing that amount of data, but if you're doing light file transfers these will do the job just fine. For bigger files I'd recommend getting a faster USB stick or getting an external SSD to speed things up, but I use these sparingly, so I don't mind they take a bit longer than premium thumbdrives or SSDs. I used to be in IT and we had faster thumbdrives for copying data because we were copying data all the time and we needed faster performance. I use these cheap ones for just stuff for family, friends, or personal use. If you don't mind the slower transfer speeds these drives will do just fine for 90% of home users. For a person heavy into IT or big on High-Performance Tech probably look elsewhere for faster drives.

they do what they need to do wish they weren’t so expensive