Skilled’s Score
Professionals
- Good 10Gbps efficiency
- Small kind issue
- Rugged, weatherproof casing
Cons
- On the gradual aspect for 10Gbps
- Not IP licensed
Our Verdict
Corsair’s Flash Survivor Stealth SSD marries a USB keep on with 10Gbps/NVMe pace, then weatherproofs and ruggedizes the entire deal. We prefer it.
Worth When Reviewed
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Finest Pricing Right now
Finest Costs Right now: Corsair Flash Survivor 1TB SSD
The Corsair Survivor Stealth would possibly seem like a ruggedized, weatherprooofed, trail-tested chapstick. Actually, it’s an armored 10Gbps USB SSD that’s considerably quicker than your common thumb drive. The truth is, the internals are NVMe, so efficiency positively leans in that course, if to not the identical diploma as bigger exterior 10Gbps SSDs.
What are the Corsair Survivor Stealth’s options?
The Survivor Stealth is an roughly 3-inch lengthy, corrugated black cylinder that’s round an inch throughout at its widest factors — these being the gentle rubber grips at both finish of the unit. Mainly, it’s a sturdy metallic tube with a USB thumb drive sealed securely inside. Flip the tip cap that has a lanyard gap and also you free the affixed drive from its protecting sheath.
Although the drive isn’t IP rated (Ingress Safety — an costly course of), I’ve little doubt it’s as water- and dust-proof as any drive you’ll discover. I ran water over it vigorously in a sink , and nary a bead of moisture entered the tube. Being an SSD, it’s additionally almost impervious to shock, and I dropped it a number of instances from 8 ft to check that idea. No points.
Additional studying: Finest exterior drives
Whether or not it will survive being run over by a automobile, I’m not sure and I don’t usually take a look at merchandise in that style. Nonetheless, given the form it’s not out of the query.
Whereas the Survivor Stealth is a 10Gbps, USB 3.0, Kind-A connector thumb drive, its internals are NVMe. Due to that, its efficiency is extra akin to that of the exterior SSDs we assessment, than that of your garden-variety USB thumb drive.
Until you’re actually pinching pennies go together with the 128GB or bigger Survivor Stealth for greatest worth.
Not an actual criticism, however I’d wish to see a Survivor that floats and is rendered in vivid colours. Drop this in water and it sinks (which may very well be good or dangerous), and black could be a very onerous colour to identify in lots of environments. Possibly the Aqua-Survivor?
How a lot is the Corsair Survivor Stealth?
The Survivor Stealth is obtainable in $20/32GB, $25/64GB, $30/128GB, $55/256GB, $100/512GB flavors in addition to the $155/1TB model I examined. That’s roughly 62.5 cents, 39 cents, 23 cents, 21.5 cents, 19.5, and 15.5 cents per gigabyte, respectively. Yup, the worth begins with the 128GB mannequin.
Until you’re actually pinching pennies go together with the 128GB or bigger Survivor Stealth.
How briskly is the Corsair Survivor Stealth?
In artificial benchmarks and with small quantities of knowledge, the 1TB Survivor Stealth carried out effectively for a 10Gbps thumb drive SSD. That stated, it couldn’t match the SK Hynix Tube T31, which continues to be by far the quickest USB thumb drive we’ve examined.
Be aware that the PNY Professional Elite V2 within the charts was a 256GB mannequin, which partially explains its slower efficiency. It’s additionally excluded from the 450GB write chart for that purpose.
The Teamgroup C212 is a 5Gbps product, with expectedly slower outcomes. It’s, nevertheless, a faster-than-average thumb drive and a great comparability of fundamental 5Gbps versus 10Gbps efficiency — therefore its inclusion.
The Survivor Stealth was a lot nearer to the top-rated Tube T31’s efficiency in CrystalDiskMark 8’s random write exams.
Nonetheless, our 1TB Survivor Stealth did decelerate reasonably quickly throughout our real-world 48GB transfers, indicating a small quantity of NAND allotted as secondary cache.
The excellent news is that it’s nonetheless writing at round 275MBps off cache, which isn’t the worst we’ve seen from an SSD by a protracted shot.
The 450GB write slowed down early and drastically, to the identical 275MBps — taking on half-hour. That’s hardly as tragic because the 5Gbps Teamgroup C212’s 125MBps took over 50 minutes. Once more, the Tube T31 stays unchallenged when it comes to USB stick efficiency among the many drives we’ve examined.
General, the Survivor Stealth’s efficiency is greater than sufficient for many duties, and much better than the common thumb drive. That stated, its important attraction is its ruggedness and weatherproofing.
Do you have to purchase the Corsair Survivor Stealth?
When you have the necessity for a super-rugged USB stick that’s considerably quicker than the 400MBps/5Gbps commodity varieties you discover in abundance, then the Survivor Stealth is just about the perfect factor going. And as I stated, regardless of the dearth of IP certification, it ought to maintain up very effectively to abuse and the weather.
Then again, in case you’re purely in efficiency, contemplate the SK Hynix Tube T31, which additionally prices considerably much less at round $90 for 1TB.
