Benchmarks: CrystalDiskMark 3.0

The sequential read performance above shows the Samsung T1 500GB reaching 417MB/s – not far from the claimed 450MB/s.

The sequential write performance is lower and further off the 450MB/s target but a throughput of 385MB/s for a USB 3.0 device is still something to behold.

With 367MB/s in the random 512K read performance, the T1 is at least 80% faster than the fastest thumb drive we've ever tested here.

Evidently flash-based thumb drives can't handle the random 512K write test as all of them delivered between 1 and 4MB/s. Kingston's HyperX Max 64GB USB 3.0 SSD is considerably quicker at 152MB/s while Samsung's T1 is much faster again with 361MB/s.

Although the 4K-QD32 performance isn't something we are overly concerned about when testing portable storage, it's interesting to note just how much faster the Samsung T1 is.

If you were planning on using the T1 as a Windows-Go storage device, it will work considerably better than any thumb drive on the market.