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PNY Turbo 128GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive USD$35.04 / AUD$51.14 Delivered from Amazon

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It appears to be one of the favourite amongst OzBargainers. PNY Turbo 3.0 USB Drive 128GB is currently having an discount to USD $29.99 (was ~$70). USD $5.05 postage to Australia. If you choose to pay in AUD to Amazon it comes down to AUD $51.14, however using something like 28degree Mastercard paying in USD would be cheaper.

Other USB 3.0 drives on sale at Amazon:

Price History at C CamelCamelCamel.

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closed Comments

  • +1

    Man the dollar is really going the way of the Papiermark

  • +2

    While still good value for a fast 128GB, it's been this price for two months.

    I'm waiting for the 256GB to fall to US$65 again.

    • The 256GB one is really slow with recent macbook pros.

  • +4

    I think last time I've posted this, some people were suggesting that they've changed controller, making it much slower than what they show on the reviews

    • +2

      Wouldn't be the first time they were bait 'n' switching

      • +3

        Yes, unfortunately, PNY have a reputation for sending out good products for reviews, and then downgrading the specs.

  • The tiny Sandisk one was about this price a week ago. Which is faster?

  • +1

    It's been this price since July.
    It hasn't been $70 since March 2014. It's misleading to say "currently having an discount to USD $29.99 (was ~$70)".
    Several deals have already been posted for this, wrongly being marked as expired. This is spam IMO.

    Plus as Oversimplified said, the stick is slow. I bought one and got 15mbps reads instead of 130mbps+.
    I would advise to avoid at all costs.

    • Not had your speeds, sorry. If you're getting 15 then it sounds like you're on USB2 instead of 3.

      • Even if bottlenecked by USB2 it would be ~30MBS, there is definitely something seriously wrong with it.

    • +1

      I know speeds can depend on the file system used, I got around 40~50MB'S if FAT/FAT32, and ~150MBS when exFAT or NTFS.

      At 15MBS there is something wrong with yours.

      • When did you buy yours? I didn't get anywhere near 150 on either of mine, regardless of file system. Wondering if it's due to the controller being switched or maybe a bad few batches. Mine were from Amazon in July.

        • -1

          Im doing a 45gb copy on one of mine as i type this and according to the transfer window its averaging around 120Mb/s which is very acceptable (and what i expect from it)

          They are good usb key overall, ive had 4 now for over a year and been flawless.

        • You've had it for over a year - that is why. They changed controllers in late 2014 and the performance has gone down considerably since. This is why there are people reporting different specs in the review - because they are comparing two very different flash drives.

          As an aside - for reporting speeds it is best to run a performance test like Flashbench or CrystalDiskMark. Copying files won't give an accurate reading as it will be very dependent on the size of the files you are copying.

        • Yeah I've had my 128's for over a year now.

          I also have a couple of their 256GB, the last bought in April, haven't noticed any drop in speed in that latest one though.

        • @CH:

          Hmm … together with my comments and link from below … makes me wonder if there are still multiple controllers being used and it's a per-batch variation as to whether you end up near the bottom or top of the massive performance variance for these drives

  • The amount of "Failure" reviews on Amazon just doesnt look very promising for the PNY, not to mention the rumours of the changed chipset that slows it down considerably.

  • had 1 a year good drive no probs

  • Worth mentioning this once in a while -
    If your pny drive has problems at the start, as mine did not being recognised on some drives, loosing partition or other prob. Repartition it with a utility called HDDLLF.4.40.exe , mine has been 100% since doing this in June 2014.

    As an aside, it just occured to me
    Was Amazon named after the Amazon river, as I just assumed years ago.
    Or possibly Amaze-on/ Amazin', thus it might be properly pronounced Amaze-on.
    Why Amazon name?

  • +2

    It's been this price for quite a while, and as commented on the other posts for it - this drive is slow and unreliable. They changed the controllers on these a while ago and performance decreased substantially. Reads about 65 and writes about 30, whether FAT32, exFat or NTFS. I bought 2 back in July and will never buy PNY again.

    • Really? Sneaky. Good to know if that's true. Thanks.

      • +1

        This link is from the PNY site: https://www.pny.com/oem/products/flash. You can see there is considerable performance difference between the PCBA and COB configurations for this drive. There is also a wide performance range for the PCBA configuration.

        The reviews from this drive from about a year ago match the upper performance range of the PCBA configuration. The reviews from the past 6 months match the performance of the cheaper COB configuration, or the bottom end of the PCBA configuration. The link refers to OEM drives, but there is no information about which configuration is being sold as retail.

        PNY has a history of using multiple "qualified" controllers within a single product line as a cost-cutting measure (refer back to the controversy with their Optima SSD line from last year). I had read somewhere about them switching controllers on this flash drive at the end of 2014, but cannot find the link now.

        Also note that the current packaging has no reference to actual flash drive speed. I believe it used to (though I could be wrong).

        • +1

          Huh - having said all that … I just read a forum post that PNY released another revision a few weeks ago with a new controller showing better performance. Haven't found any other supporting evidence of this … but according to the post, the outer shell has changed as well (so I'm sure somebody can visually confirm this at some point). I guess this is a case of YMMV …

  • What is the speed of these compared to the SanDisk Ultra's? I grabbed the tiny SanDisk but already the key ring clip has broken.

    Also, if anyone plans to use this as a Linux OS persistant USB with Linux- Windows will not recognize multiple partitions on it.

  • My PNY 256GB from Amazon stone dead after about 4 months. Just saying. Also they are very lightweight and plasticky.

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