Patriot's new Supersonic Rage 2 is a high capacity (up to 256GB) and high-performance flash drive packed into durable rubberized housing for secure on-the-go transfers. With reported transfer speeds of 400MB/s read and 300 MB/s write, Rage 2 not only surpasses the speeds of its predecessor (the Supersonic Rage XT, 180MB/s and 50MB/s, respectively), it is also one of the fastest high-capacity flash drives we have reviewed to date. The Rage 2 leverages MLC NAND and a state of the art IC controller, as well as an LED light indicator for transfers. This flash drive would be ideal for any use case, but especially those in which a sturdy large capacity drive is desired (such as traveling media professionals or extremists).
The Rage 2 carries a price tag of $109.99 and $199.99 for the 128GB and 256GB model, respectively, and comes with a 5-year warranty.
Specifications
Design and Build
Patriot didn't invest too much in the design of the Rage 2; it has simple black rubberized housing with blue branding with rounded edges.
There is a sturdy slider mechanism that retracts the USB connector between uses, as well a keychain loop. Overall, it has a pretty standard USB drive design that has no cap to lose.
Performance
In this review, we have included the following Patriot brand comparables from our database of USB flash drive reviews:
Using our HP Z620 Workstation Testing Platform running Windows 8.1, we measured transfer speeds from the Supersonic Rage 2 with IOMeter, which posted 274.94MB/s read and 134.75MB/s write. It came in second in terms of read, outpacing the Extreme PRO (229MB/s) and Supersonic Magnum (247.02MB/s), but falling short of the Voyager GTX (286.5MB/s). The Supersonic Rage 2 was faster than the Voyager GTX (63.47MB/s) in write transfers, but both flash drives were slower than the other comparables (211MB/s and 151.25MB/s from the Extreme PRO and Supersonic Magnum, respectively).
When switching to random large-block transfers, the Supersonic Rage 2 posted 242.96MB/s read and 0.995MB/s write. Needless to say, this write performance is quite low, coming in as the slowest out of all of the other flash drives (66.4MB/s, 57.5MB/s, and 39.05MB/s from Extreme PRO, Voyager GTX, and Supersonic Magnum, respectively). On the other hand, its read performance was quite good; it was only outpaced by the Voyager GTX, which had a read speed of 282.9MB/s. The extreme pro and magnum posted reads of 66.4MB/s and 39.05MB/s, respectively.
Our last flash drive benchmark measures 4K random transfer performance in IOPS. In this benchmark, the Supersonic Rage 2 posted pretty low numbers; 1,546.4 IOPS read and 0.57 IOPS write. For comparison, the Voyager GTX posted 6,711.4 IOPS and 1,1784.1 IOPS in read and write, respectively.
Conclusion
The Supersonic Rage 2, which delivers up to 256GB of storage, is Patriot's newest USB 3.0 flash drive. It was built to last, like many of Patriot's flash drives, so that it can serve demanding use cases for as long as possible (its longevity is reinforced by its 5-year warranty). The Supersonic Rage 2 fell quite short of Patriot's reported transfer speeds, and was especially lacking in random writes. However, this flash drive is the least expensive per GB out of all of the comparable drives; it runs about $0.78/GB, whereas the Extreme PRO, Voyager GTX, and Supersonic Magnum cost around $0.93/GB, $0.93GB, and $1.01/GB, respectively (all retail pricing). Thus, the Supersonic Rage 2 is one of the least expensive large-capacity flash drives available, and should be considered by users that might be willing to sacrifice write speed for capacity and cost.
Pros
Cons
The Bottom Line
The Supersonic Rage 2 would serve most users looking for an inexpensive high-capacity flash drive with very good sequentian read speeds, though potential buyers should be sure to note the very slow random write transfer speeds.
Patriot Supersonic Rage 2 at Amazon
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