By: Jonathan Kwan
April 6, 2018
If you are from Canada, you may have gotten used to a few things that many people from the rest of the world have a hard time wrapping the heads around. Firstly, Canada is ridiculously large; secondly, our plane tickets are among the most expensive in the world. Recently, one of my friends who just came to Calgary from England to study as an international student posted in a Facebook group I was in. "Does anyone want to visit Toronto or Vancouver over the reading break?" I kind of chuckled at that question, since anyone from Canada would know you do not fly from one major city to the next, on a university student budget, on a short notice during a break that is only one week long. In case you are from Europe, let me explain to you this way: Driving two hours would probably get you across two countries in your part of the world, while for us, we would have not even have reached the next major city inside the province of Alberta. The next time I met my friend, I tried to explain this to her. "Flying to Toronto is a four-hour flight," I said. "That is further than London to Istanbul or Moscow and it costs three times as much." Canada, eh? More often than not, we misjudge the size of something because of pre-understandings or perception; either way, we still misjudge. A few years ago, I reviewed the SanDisk Ultra Fit 128GB, a ridiculously tiny USB flash drive with a shocking amount of storage. Even today, people misjudge the capacity of the drive mainly because it is physically so small. Today, we will take a look at yet another Ultra Fit from SanDisk, but this time around, they doubled the capacity to 256GB and updated the interface to USB 3.1. Is this the Canada to our European friends of flash drives? Read on to see if this is a product that will change our perceptions and pre-understandings once again!
Our review unit of the SanDisk Ultra Fit 256GB came in a medium sized, UPS-branded corrugated cardboard box from the company's American headquarters in Milpitas, California, USA. In the many years of APH Networks' existence, we have only reviewed two other USB flash drives from the company; those being the SanDisk Ultra Fit 128GB in 2015 and SanDisk Cruzer Titanium U3 2GB in 2006. The Ultra Fit 256GB we are reviewing today bumps this number to three. With much excitement here in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, I cracked open the package to see what the company has in store for us. The package came to us via the UPS Saver shipping service.
SanDisk has always been about getting down to the business of things, and the SanDisk Ultra Fit 256GB hang-sell packaging does a great job in carrying through with this theme by using the company's signature red and white color scheme. It starts off with an all-serious font highlighting its model name at the top, and a brief description of feature highlights right under. An image of a laptop can be seen in the background. The USB drive itself can be seen behind a layer of clear plastic. Occupying a big part of the bottom is SanDisk's logo that you simply cannot miss. The drive capacity and rated read speed is located near the upper right hand corner. In our particular case, we have the 256GB version, but the Ultra Fit is also available in more peasant grade 16GB, 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB variants. Generally speaking, its retail package design is not groundbreaking, but it certainly carries a lot of brand image consistency.
Before we move on, let us take a look at the specifications of the SanDisk Ultra Fit 256GB, as obtained from the manufacturer's website:
Available capacity: 16GB, 32GB, 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB
Performance/Speed: Up to 130MB/s read
Dimensions: 19.1 x 15.9 x 8.8 mm; 0.75 x 0.63 x 0.35 in (LxWxH)
Operating Temperature: 0 C to 35 C
Storage Temperature: -10 C to 70 C
Compatibility: USB 3.1 (backward compatible with USB 3.0 and USB 2.0)
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. A Closer Look, Test System
3. Benchmark: AIDA64 Disk Benchmark
4. Benchmark: ATTO Disk Benchmark
5. Benchmark: Crystal Disk Mark 3.0
6. Benchmark: HD Tach 3.0.1.0
7. Benchmark: HD Tune Pro 4.60
8. Conclusion
