We tested this USB drive against many other USB flash drives we had laying around the lab. We tested the drive using the ATTO benchmark and HDTach R/W. The following hardware was used:
- Dell Precision M4400 portable workstation
- nVidia Quadro FX 770M 512MB Graphics Card
- 4GB DDR2-800 memory
- Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 @ 2.26Ghz (check out notebooks with this processor)
- CoolerMaster Sentinel Advance 5600dpi Gaming Mouse
- Hitachi 160GB 7200RPM laptop hard drive (check out laptop hard drives)
- Windows 7 Ultimate
The Verbatim TUFF-CLIP held its own against many of the other flash drives, offering an average 12MB/s write speed and 32MB/s read speed, very similar to Verbatim’s Tuff n Tiny flash drive reviewed here. The write speed is about what you should expect for a mid-range USB flash drive, and is easily much faster than the many cheap promotional drives we get at trade shows, like the assets that came from Peregrine. It has slightly above-normal write speeds and very good read speeds, but if you want the next level of performance then you need to purchase an enthusiast-level USB drive.
The performance of the Verbatim TUFF-CLIP drive is pretty good, but isn’t enthusiast-level. I’m really surprised that a drive touted as being rugged did not come with a rubber coating or anodized aluminum carabineer clip. The plastic flexes just a bit too much for me to be confident in its overall durability. The size of this drive is almost as large as the Corsair Flash Voyager 64GB reviewed here, but has only an eighth of its capacity.
On the plus side, I do like the integrated pull-down cap, and even though the drive is large it easily clips onto just about anything. I’ve had lots of fun just slapping it onto Ethernet cables and key-chains. The performance of the drive is average, so you’re really buying this drive for its extra features, which may work for students or those who want to look like mountaineers.
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