Patriot launches Supersonic Rage Prime USB 3.2 Gen 2 stick with 5 year warranty and up to 600 MB/s read speeds

PC memory manufacturer Patriot has announced the availability of its Supersonic Rage Prime USB series consisting of thumb drives from 250 GB up to 1 TB. The drives are notable for offering read rates of up to 600 MB/s to better exploit the wider bandwidth of USB 3.0 or 3.2 ports.

The manufacturer has sent us a sample for our impressions and results are great with just a few caveats. The cap-less design in particular is a huge positive as it means you won't have to worry about losing a removable cap every time you want to use the drive. The keychain loop can also be invaluable when traveling.

Actual performance, however, will vary. We connected our Patriot stick to a 2021 Razer Blade 14 which integrates multiple USB-A 3.2 ports. Synthetic benchmarks like CrystalDiskMark, ATTO, and AS SSD would return good results at first as shown below including write rates approaching 500 MB/s or faster. The problem occurs when trying to maintain those fast performance numbers over long periods.

To test performance sustainability, we tried moving 530 GB of movie files to the Patriot drive. Transfer rates were initially pretty good at about 500 MB/s much like what we observed during the synthetic benchmarks above. After just a few minutes, however, transfer rates would drop to a more stable 220 MB/s or less than half of the initial maximum rate. What should have taken roughly 17 minutes to complete our movie library transfer would instead take 35 to 40 minutes.

A look through our thermal camera shows that the drive can get pretty warm at over 40 C when transferring large amount of files. Thermal limitations may be preventing the drive from running at maximum rates indefinitely. It's still fast, of course, especially if you plan on moving just a few large files at a time. Nonetheless, owners shouldn't expect it to perform at full throttle after just a few minutes of heavy use.

The Patriot Supersonic Rage Prime USB 3.2 Gen 2 is now available on Amazon with a base five-year limited warranty.

• 250 GB for $54.99
• 500 GB for $94.99
• 1 TB for $174.99