Kingfast 32GB Secure Hardware Encrypted USB Flash Drive Review

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If you are like me, when you think of a secure storage solution, then you probably associate it with something with a software layer that enables a type of AES or Bitlocker encryption to protect your data as this is the most common type of security used with flash drives. Kingfast thought outside the box with this next product and took things to the next level with a full on keypad to protect your data.

If we dig even further into the specifications for this flash drive, you will find that Kingfast has setup this drive for 20 years of data retention at 25c with unlimited read endurance. Write endurance for the 32GB model we have in-house today extends to eight years at 100GB per day.

In addition to this, we have built-in ECC with data destroy, bad block management, and both static and dynamic wear levelling. Performance specifications of the drive have it capable of 20 MB/s read and 18 MB/s write, so we know right off the bat this drive was designed to be secure over high performance.

MSRP of the Kingfast Secure USB in the 32GB flavor is listed at $99.99 with a one-year warranty.

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Kingfast put together great packaging for the Secure USB. As you can see, they packaged the drive in dense foam within a small box.

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The front of the drive houses the 11 button keypad and comes secured from the factory. Pushing the unlock button sets off a series of LED flashes, which give you six seconds to enter the passcode for the drive.

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The Kingfast utilizes a capped design but fits very snug.

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The Kingfast Secure USB is factory formatted with the FAT32 file system, ensuring compatibility between Windows and Macintosh computers. The usable capacity after formatting is 29.7GB.

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Here we have the results from CDM. As you can see, the Kingfast met specifications for read performance at 22 MB/s but fell short on write performance peaking at 9 MB/s.

The Kingfast Secure USB is one of those solutions that is purpose built and, as such, is built like an Abrams tank. The build quality of this drive really couldn't get any better; the entire structure of the drive is metal sealed up to be waterproof, dustproof, and even shock proof. In addition, the keypad enables hardware AES 256 encryption, and in the event someone was to enter the password incorrectly ten times, your data is destroyed.

Performance of the drive met marketing specifications on the read side of things at 22 MB/s, but the write performance fell short, topping out at 9 MB/s. While this could just be an issue with the benchmark used, I don't count it as a bad thing when we take into consideration what purpose the drive fills, but we do hope Kingfast goes back to the drawing board and whips up a USB 3.0 variant for us to test.

MSRP of the Kingfast Secure USB in the 32GB capacity is set at $99.99 with a one-year warranty.

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