Corsair Flash Voyager Mini 64GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive Review

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Flash drives offer us a solution to transfer files to take with us on the go. For the most part, these devices have always had one downfall, especially if you're working on a notebook - and that's size. With notebooks and tablet PCs shrinking each generation, there comes a time when the storage we use with these devices has to shrink down to size as well.

Recently, Corsair announced the availability of a complete range of new flash drives. The Mini, as the name states, is a small form factor USB 3.0 flash drive. Capacities range from 16GB and 32GB models, all the way up to an impressive 64GB model. Compatibility includes Windows, Macintosh and Linux operating system. The Flash Voyager Mini carries a very solid five year warranty.

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The Corsair Mini carries a sleek dark brushed metal surface, with logos adorning the sides of the drive. At the top, the key ring is secured straight to the body of the drive.

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Of course, the USB 3.0 port is properly colored to denote its capabilities.

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Here we have put the Voyager Mini pictured up against a few other pico drives we have tested previously.

One of the lesser-known features of running Microsoft's new operating system Windows 8 is the native capability of USB Attached SCSI or UASP. In benchmarking flash drives, we utilize ATTO Disk Benchmark followed by DiskBench and our custom set of real-world data, and is by far the most important comparison when looking for a flash drive for everyday use.

Recently we have added our very own Price vs. Performance charts for both read and write performance of each drive, for these charts we take the average sequential performance over five runs and divide it by the price per GB. All pricing information is updated before a new drive is added and is taken from certified channel retailers such as Newegg or Amazon.

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The Corsair Flash Voyager Mini is factory formatted with the FAT32 file system, insuring compatibility between Windows and Macintosh computers. The usable capacity after formatting is 57.6GB.

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ATTO results were promising for the Voyager Mini. Here we see the drive peak at a rate of 79 MB/s read and 20MB/s write.

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DiskBench testing threw a slight curve at the Mini, where we find the drive towards the bottom of our chart. Though, it is slightly faster than the Super Talent Pico.

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Moving over to price/performance, the Voyager Mini landed itself right behind the PQI i-Mont and ahead of the Super Talent Pico.

While the Corsair Flash Voyager Mini certainly isn't a burner when it comes to performance, it does offer tremendous capacity in a very small form factor. An added bonus to this is the over durability of the unit, being a single piece design.

Touching on the drives performance, where it does offer decent read speeds of 70 MB/s. Unfortunately, most of the work with flash drives is done by writing groups of files to them and that's where we only managed 20 MB/s.

Pricing at this time for the 64GB capacity model is set at $54.99.

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