As we’ve discovered with other USB drive testing, the throughput varies on your motherboard’s chipset and drivers. During our testing, it became evident that the A-Data C702 16GB drive had better-than-average read speed, but only slightly better-than-average write speed. At around 7MB a second write, it can’t hold a candle to OCZ’s dual-channel Rally2 drive (reviewed here), but is able to pass up OCZ’s ATV drive (which supposedly also sports dual-channel technology). By now, a 6-7 Megabyte write speed should be the bare minimum for flash drives.
The C702 has design features that other manufacturers should implement. I never want to see a flash drive with a lanyard ever again, so the integrated keyring is a welcome sight for today’s portable storage. The retractable USB plug means that there are no caps to lose while still protecting the USB connector. The plastic shell will start to look worn after several months, so a ruggedized coating would be a nice addition.
High-capacity flash drives aren’t as expensive as you might think. Going down the isles of Best Buy or other technology store, you may be left thinking that 16 gigabytes of flash storage must be exhorbidantly expensive. I mean, these stores sell 4GB flash drives for nearly $100! If you look online for 16GB flash drives, you’ll see that most of them range between $50 and $80, and even “performance” models aren’t that much more.
As flash drive capacity becomes more expansive, the write speeds need to increase to keep up. While the A-data C702 16GB drive has a ton of space, the average write speed means that it will take a long time to fill up. You can easily run portable applications on it, but a good dual-channel drive makes portable Photoshop and web browsing much more bearable.
If you plan on writing to the drive alot then you may be more satisfied with a dual-channel model. If you just need to have a lot of information with you at all times, then A-Data’s C702 16GB unit is a great drive for a great price.
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