The PNY Pro Elite V3 is a compact 10Gbps USB drive that stands out for its clever retractable design. While not the absolute fastest on the market, its convenient form factor and respectable performance make it a strong contender for everyday use. This review dives into its features, performance, and overall value.
Design and Features
The Pro Elite V3 is remarkably small, measuring roughly 2.5 inches long, 0.75 inches wide, and 0.4 inches thick. Its two-part design features a textured headpiece with a lanyard attachment point and a robust, captive sleeve that slides to cover and protect the Type-C connector. This retractable design eliminates the frustration of losing separate caps and ensures smooth insertion, a welcome improvement over some fiddly retractable mechanisms.
The drive’s internals appear to be NVMe-based, given its performance surpasses SATA capabilities. The slowdown to 280MBps observed during a 450GB write test suggests the use of older TLC NAND or potentially a newer, faster QLC variant. This speed, however, still outpaces the native write speeds typically seen with QLC NAND.
PNY offers a limited two-year warranty, likely subject to conditions such as physical damage or excessive data writes. While a specific TBW (Terabytes Written) rating wasn’t provided, the drive’s lifespan should be sufficient for most users.
Pricing and Availability
The PNY Pro Elite V3 is available in capacities of 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB, priced competitively with other similar-performing drives. The cost per gigabyte decreases slightly with larger capacities, offering good value across the range.
Performance
While the Pro Elite V3 doesn’t quite match the top speeds of competitors like the SK Hynix Tube T31 or Seagate Ultra Compact SSD, its performance is still impressive, particularly compared to its predecessor, the V2.
In CrystalDiskMark 8’s sequential tests, the Pro Elite V3 demonstrates competitive read and write speeds. However, it lags slightly behind the top contenders in random 4K tests.
Real-world 48GB transfer tests show good performance, although again slightly slower than the leading competitors.
The 450GB write test reveals a significant slowdown, likely due to secondary cache exhaustion.
Despite this slowdown, the Pro Elite V3’s overall performance remains suitable for most everyday tasks.
Conclusion
The PNY Pro Elite V3 offers a compelling combination of convenience and performance. While other drives might offer slightly higher speeds, the Pro Elite V3’s compact and user-friendly retractable design makes it a practical choice for daily use. It’s a solid option for users seeking a portable and reliable storage solution.
