Lexar S73 128GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive Review

As far as flash drives go, Lexar has always made some of the most reliable drives I have had in my arsenal of storage. When I have their drives around, they are always my go-to drive for installing an operating system or moving data between PCs. Even with this excellence of build quality, one place they have always lacked was capacity, but today we finally have the best of both world's with the 128GB S73.

The Lexar S73 is a drive I have been waiting to take a look at for quite a while. With capacity options ranging from 8GB to 256GB, there is surely an option for everyone in this product line-up. Marketing information for the 128GB capacity in-house today gives us 100 MB/s read and 55 MB/s write, and compatibility of the S73 extends from modern Windows Operating systems and OS X 10.6+.

Looking at the S73, you can see it carries a similar shape and design to the Triton and P10 also from Lexar.

The S73 uses the slider design to protect the USB 3.0 port while not in use.

Here we have the USB 3.0 port colored appropriately.

The Lexar S73 is factory formatted with the FAT32 file system, ensuring compatibility between Windows and Macintosh computers. The usable capacity after formatting is 119GB.

Above, we have the results from our FOB testing. As you can see, the S73 exceeded the marketing specs by quite a fair margin, touching 200 MB/s read and 95 MB/s write.

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In our DiskBench testing, the S73 landed in the middle of our charts.

Here we have the latest Price/Performance chart for flash drives. Looking over the chart, we find the S73 towards the middle of the pack, but it's ahead of both previous Lexar drives tested. The Lexar S73 comes in at 65.2 percent.

The Lexar S73 is quite the drive, and if we go off marketing specifications, you would think the drive is only capable of 100 MB/s read and 55 MB/s write. Of course, Lexar has to market the drive to specs most people will see with a non-UASP setup, but you can see in our results what the drive is truly capable of.

Build quality of the Lexar S73 is quite good; the plastics feel durable enough to handle daily use, but the sliding mechanism does tend to catch at times, a minor flaw in my eyes.

The current market price of the Lexar S73 128GB USB 3.0 flash drive is listed below and it comes with a three-year warranty.

PRICING: You can find the Lexar S73 128GB USB 3.0 flash drive for sale below. The prices listed are valid at the time of writing but can change at any time. Click the link to see the very latest pricing for the best deal.

United States: The Lexar S73 128GB USB 3.0 flash drive retails for $84.99 at Amazon.

Canada: The Lexar S73 128GB USB 3.0 flash drive retails for CDN$140.14 at Amazon Canada.