Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

PERFORMANCE: I purchased the Kingston DataTraveler Max for the advertised write speed of 900 MB/s. I was excited when I initially saw a write speed in the 860's, which is fairly close to the rated number, but my excitement was short-lived as the drive did not sustain the high write speed for more than about 45 to 60 seconds before dropping to 1/10th of the initial write speed. I suspect the Kingston's drive controller is throttling the write speed due to heat, but I called Kingston support and they clammed up when I asked about this. I asked them very specifically if the drive is expected to write at the rated speed continuously, or only for a limited duration of time, but they kept sidestepping my question. Either they didn't know the answer or they weren't allowed to say. Also, just to be clear, my laptop is an 11th gen i7 with Thunderbolt4 ports capable of 5000 MB/s, and I have benchmarked other external SSD drives at continuous write speeds much higher than this Kingston, so I am confident my laptop has nothing to do with the Kingston's inability to sustain its write speed. Note that if you are doing a CrystalDiskMark test with the default parameters, the sequential write portion of the test will be short enough that the drive will not slow down so the score will be high. You need to adjust the parameters to make the test run longer, by increasing the number of passes and/or the amount of data, in order to see the drive slow down. Alternatively, you can just run the test several times in a row to heat up the drive, and eventually you will see the write performance drop to 1/10th. APPEARANCE: I was under the impression the Kingston DataTraveler Max was supposed to be Kingston's top-of-the-line flagship offering in the flash drive market, so I was disappointed at how cheap it looks and feels. The enclosure is all plastic, and it really does not seem like they put much thought into its design. The entire bottom half of the drive slides to extend or retract the USB-C plug, which makes the keychain loop stick out awkwardly when the plug is retracted, exposing sharp edges and a surface that looks unfinished. Furthermore, the retracted plug is only hidden from the top of the drive, which is beyond cheesy! Turn the drive over, and the plug is fully exposed and unprotected! It's hard to believe Kingston couldn't come up with a more elegant design than this! MISSING/DEFECTIVE BLUE LED: While on the phone with Kingston support, I asked them if by any chance there was a design revision where the LED was removed, but they said no, there definitely should be a blue LED on this drive. Nope! The LED is either missing or defective, because it has never illuminated, even when the drive is actively reading and writing. I even checked in a completely dark room just to be certain. SUMMARY: If you want a flash drive that will write for short durations at impressively high speeds, this drive might be for you, assuming you can overlook the terrible external design and appearance of the drive. However, if you are expecting the drive to write continuously at high speeds while you back up large amounts of data, you are going to be very disappointed when the drive throttles and your backup takes 10 times longer than expected.