The Bottom Line
Three years ago, I had the chance when first starting here at TweakTown to review the original Supersonic Magnum from Patriot. Now with the latest technology, a successor has been launched, accurately dubbed the Magnum 2.
Apart from the internals and exterior color, the Magnum 2 shares quite a bit with its predecessor. Patriot has stayed with the large footprint of the original as I'm sure it enables them the room to deploy such a large amount of flash along with keeping the aluminum capped design. Marketing materials suggest this new solution is capable of 400 MB/s read and 300 MB/s writes, making it ideal for desktop and portable PCs, offering 256GB and 512GB capacity options.
Compatibility includes Windows, OS X, and Linux Kernel 2.4+. MSRP of the 256GB Supersonic Magnum 2 is $129.99 with a five-year warranty.
The packaging for the Magnum 2 is quite simple. Marketing information is listed across the top and bottom with the capacity to the right.
On the backside, there is additional information in several languages including the mention of USB 3.1 Gen 1 support.
Taking a look at the drive, we find it quite similar to the original Magnum. This time around the exterior has been coated black with branding and capacity in white. This is a capped design but to ease your mind the cap can be stored at the back of the drive.
The Patriot SS Magnum 2 is factory formatted with the exFAT file system, ensuring compatibility between Windows and Macintosh computers. The usable capacity after formatting is 235GB.
Starting off testing, read and write performance for the Magnum 2 came in at 313 MB/s read and 173 MB/s write.
After 11 months at the top of our price/performance charts, the Rage 2 finally gets passed up by the Magnum 2.
A quick look at the Anvils chart has the Magnum 2 as the fifth quickest drive we have tested.
The Magnum 2 is one of the larger drives on the market in both footprint and capacity. At 256GB, you will be forking over quite a few of your hard earned dollars to get anything much larger. The build quality is quite solid and in my testing I had no issues with this drive dropping over the numbers of times I plugged it in.
Performance, as you seen in our charts above, was quite good but did fall under the prescribed marketing numbers. In read and write, I was able to reach 313 MB/s read and 173 MB/s write and those numbers were shadowed with our new Z170 test system as well. Anvils did give the Magnum2 some love with an overall storage score of 754 making it the fifth quickest we have seen. Price/performance may be heating up this year with NAND prices dropping to near 41 cents per GB as we seen with the Samsung T3.
Overall, for a high capacity flash drive solution, the Magnum 2 is a worthy successor to its original and a solid solution for those in the market.
Tyler's Test System Specifications
- Motherboard: ASUS Z97-A - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
- CPU: Intel Core i7 4770K - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
- Cooler: Corsair H100i GTX - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
- Memory: Patriot Viper 3 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3 1600 - Buy from Amazon
- Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
- Storage: Intel 730 480GB - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
- Case: Corsair Obsidian 750D - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
- Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower 750W - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
- OS: Microsoft Windows 10 - Buy from Amazon
Performance | 80% |
Quality including Design and Build | 85% |
General Features | 85% |
Bundle and Packaging | 75% |
Value for Money | 89% |
Overall | 83% |
The Bottom Line: Offering quite solid read performance, the Patriot Supersonic Magnum 2 256GB flash drive is a good product for those needing high capacity solution on a budget.
PRICING: You can find products similar to this one for sale below.
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Deutschland: Finde andere Technik- und Computerprodukte wie dieses auf Amazon.de
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