Other by jmke @ 2013-11-15
SuperTalent launched their first Pico drive in 2008, now they are back with the same compact design, but much larger and promising higher speeds thanks to USB 3.0 interface. Let us put it to test.
Today we have a new product review from Super Talent, they send us their famous Pico drive, but now with USB 3.0 power! Let us take a closer look to see how it performs.
Super Talent USB 3.0 Pico Flash Drive
It looks very similar to the model we tested in 2008, but now comes with a few details that give away its USB 3.0 capabilities.
The Pico comes with a detachable cable cord, for easy attachment to your key-ring without having your key-ring attached to the computer when in use.
It's definitely smaller than most of the competition, pictured on the right is the Pico and a Lacie Key-Shaped USB Stick.
On the left side you can see the Pico next to a Core 2 Duo S775 CPU, on the right you can see the small Blue detail on the Pico to give a hint of its USB 3.0 capability.
We ran a few performance tests on a Lenovo T530 laptop (configured with quad core CPU, 8Gb memory and 180Gb SSD storage). As well as with a Synology DS1513+ NAS. Performance on the laptop and NAS was very similar, only negligible differences related to file system choice were detected.
The Pico comes formatted as FAT32 from the factory:
On a 32Gb USB drive the file system does make a difference, FAT32 might be compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux, it does have some serious limitations regarding path length, but more importantly: file size. FAT32 maximum single file size is 4Gb. Trying to place a full size DVD copy on there (which is >8gb) is impossible out of the box. Formatting the drive to NTFS or exFAT resolves this issue. We understand the reasoning, compatibility wise for Super Talent to ship the drive with FAT32, but it would be good if they mentioned the downsides of keeping the drive on FAT32.
Our first test compares performance of the Pico 32gb Flash drive formatted with FAT32, NTFS and EXT4
Using ATTO Disk Benchmark, the read test with both file systems is almost the same; both topping out ~90Mb/s when file chunk size reached 16k.
4k read speed at 30Mb/s is also commendable!
The write tests shows a bigger difference at smaller file chunks, with a large performance in favor of FAT32. As the file size grows the performance becomes again very similar.
The last test on the Synology, we plugged the Pico into an USB 3.0 port on the NAS and accessed the 32Gb space through SMB Network protocol from a client.
The performance advantages goes to the EXT 4 file format, understandable as the Synology is running a Linux based OS,
and writing/reading to FAT32 has a small overhead.
The Pico delivers very satisfying read performance, the write speeds are less stellar, barely matching USB 2.0 throughput speed. How does it compare to a similarly sized device from the competition? Colleague reviewer Stefan put the Patriot Tab through the grinder before; here's how both match up.
When it comes to reading performance, the Patriot Tab USB 3.0 stick is clearly superior.
(4KB test results are *1000 *10 for clarification on the chart)
The File System test of HD Tune Pro gives some interesting numbers. The sequential read test has the Patriot in the lead as expected. But when it comes to write speeds the SuperTalent drive pulls ahead, writing sequential the Pico is almost twice as fast, writing small files (4KB), the Pico is 8 times quicker!
With the introduction of USB 3.0 we finally got rid of the 30Mb/s real world performance cap imposed on USB 2.0 thumb stick drives. However it quickly became apparent that not all USB 3.0 sticks are created equally, some even doing worse than high performance USB 2.0 sticks... marketing at work.
Performance chart of the same file copied TO and FROM the Pico drive.
Luckily we can report that the USB 3.0 label on the Super Talent Pico drive is not purely marketing; the little engine that could delivers sustained read speeds over 90Mb/s during our tests, while it's not the fastest on the market, it's definitely not slow. Writing speeds are about 1/3 of that number, averaging at 27-29mb/s on a good day.
If you liked the original Pico drive, the new USB 3.0 version is a worthy successor, offering triple reading speeds and doubling writing speeds, while maintaining its compact size and overall looks. Price wise we're look at ~$50 at Amazon for the 32Gb version, but if you shop around a bit $40 and lower is possible.
Looking at the competition, the Super Talent Pico comes at $10 premium, for which you get higher write speeds, but slower read speeds. If you're looking for a spacy yet compact USB stick to write tons of data to at regular intervals the extra write speeds will be felt. If however reading media from the stick is your primary concern, there are faster alternatives at lower prices available.
We'd like to thank Heather from Super Talent for giving us a chance to test drive their latest products.