Corsair Flash Voyager GS 256GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive Review

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For those that want the very best in terms of raw performance, I can think of a very few flash drives that would fit the bill. One of course is the Mushkin Ventura Ultra, and another would be the JumpDrive P10 from Lexar. Today though, we have one more drive that may just be worthy of a top mention in the extreme performance category.

The Corsair Flash Voyager GS is an eight channel USB 3.0 flash drive, available in 64GB, 128GB and 256GB capacities. Being that we have seen the very similar Supersonic Magnum from Patriot come through the lab, performance should be near 300 MB/s read and 150 MB/s writes. Compatibility is set for modern Windows operating systems, along with Linux and Mac OS X. Warranty for the Flash Voyager GS is set at an industry leading five years.

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The Flash Voyager GS carries a brushed aluminium exterior sporting Corsair's logo.

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The design of the GS enables it to use a capped design.

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Internally, we have an eight channel Phison PS2251-01 paired with two 64GB NAND flash packages.

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The back of the PCB houses two more NAND packages.

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 GS is factory formatted with the FAT32 file system, insuring compatibility between Windows and Macintosh computers. The usable capacity after formatting is 235GB.

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ATTO allowed the Voyager GS 294 MB/s read next to 109 MB/s write.

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With our real data workloads, DiskBench had the Voyager GS near the top of our charts. In fact, the only downfall of the GS was the ISO test.

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Price/performance we have a new king of the hill. The Corsair Flash Voyager GS managed a healthy lead here due to its excellent raw data performance and pricing from Corsair.

If you are in the market for a flash drive with immense capacity, Corsair has delivered with the Voyager GS. If you want added durability, the GS delivers here too with its single piece brushed aluminium design. Want performance, too? Again Corsair has delivered with the GS.

Looking through our benchmarks, it's hard to find any downfall of the Voyager GS. I guess if we wanted to be picky, we could say the large design of the drive allows it to block adjacent ports in a horizontal configuration. Apart from that, I haven't a single complaint about the drive.

Pricing of the 256GB Flash Voyager GS is set at $259.99. You can opt for the smaller 64GB or 128GB capacity as well with those units priced at $84.99 and $119.99, respectively.

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