Corsair Flash Voyager GTX Promises SSD-Level Performance
When you need an easy way to carry around a bunch of data you generally have two options: for fast storage you need an SSD with some sort of USB 3.0 (or eSATA) adapter; otherwise you’re stuck with a small and portable USB stick that likely has much lower overall performance. There have been a few companies offering faster USB stick alternatives, but of course the price tends to scale rapidly. Corsair is offering another entrant into this category with their new Flash Voyager GTX, available in 128GB and 256GB capacities.
In terms of raw specs, the Flash Voyager GTX boasts read/write speeds of up to 450/350 MB/s. The drives feature support for USB Attached SCSI, SMART monitoring, and TRIM. Unfortunately, there’s plenty of information still missing; I’d like to see performance numbers for transferring lots of small files, and random I/O would be interesting as well; there’s no specific mention of the controller or NAND type either. That means we’ll have to wait for a full review before we can truly compare performance with that of SSDs.
Given the storage capacity these are obviously slightly larger USB stick enclosures. Availability is scheduled for July, with an MSRP of $120 for the 128GB model and $200 for the 256GB model.
