Patriot Stellar USB/microUSB 3.0 OTG Flash Drive [Review]

What is it?

The Patriot Stellar is a USB thumb drive with a regular USB connection on one end and a microUSB on the other. There’s a small cap that pops off to expose the microUSB side to protect from dust, lint, etc. It comes in 16, 32, and 64GB sizes and is USB 3.0. It’s compact and has the same height and width of a USB port.

Mounting

I mounted the Patriot Stellar on several different Android devices around the office including an LG G2, an HTC One, and a Samsung Note 3; you’d just plug it in and any file explorer app was able to read, copy, move, delete, and rename its contents without a hitch. My Nexus 5 on the other hand (as well as other Nexus devices) requires a helper app to mount any OTG storage because it’s not supported natively, I’d recommend Stickmount by Chainfire (note that root permissions are required). If you’re not rooted, Total Commander in conjunction with its USB Stick Plugin will mount as Nexus OTG storage as well.

Testing

I pitted the Patriot Stellar against other external storage options, even my N5 itself. I used my N5 to create a nandroid backup in TWRP, each of which hovered around 4.7GB in size. Additionally, I tested each of the storage options’ read and write speeds with THIS free USB speed test on my work PC. (Note that the Patriot Stellar is USB 3.0 and the other storage options were USB 2.0, but I only have USB 2.0 ports on my machine, so the Stellar’s performance on a USB 3.0 would be even more Stellar.) For comparison, my N5 created a nandroid on its internal storage in 571 seconds:

• Patriot Stellar 64 GB: nandroid created in 801 s, read = 34.3 MB/s, write = 20.9 MB/s
• Meenova  w/ class 10, 64 GB micro SD: nandroid created in 961 s, read = 19.7 MB/s, write = 6.9 MB/s
• USB OTG Cable with 64 GB flash drive: nandroid created in 1,020 s, read = 22.1 MB/s, write = 5.5 MB/s

As you can see regarding the tested external storage options, the Patriot Stellar won in all categories. Even compared to writing a nandroid directly to internal storage, it only took 40% longer, which is rather impressive.

The Good

• It’s small, compact, and works as it should
• Read/Write speed is insane
• Three sizes available to fit your needs
• Solid, durable, and quality construction
• 2-year warranty
• The price

The Bad

• Since it’s small and detachable, it can be easily lost

Final Thoughts

The Patriot Stellar is the BEST solution for those with mobile devices who need extra storage. I would argue that it’s even better than an internal SD card because a cable isn’t required to transfer files to a computer. I found the Stellar to be extremely helpful for loading new ROMs onto and saving nandroid backups to. I originally bought a Meenova microSD card reader for that same purpose, but the Stellar has replaced my Meenova. I’d recommend the Patriot Stellar to anyone with an Android device—especially those who do root and require extra space for ROMs and backups.

If you’re interested in one of the Patriot Stellar’s many size options you have a couple of choices. You can head to the old standby, Amazon, and pick up a 16GB, 32Gb or 64GB Patriot Stellar via the links below.

The price points are pretty stellar for their sizes and what they do. As an extra special incentive to our reader though, we have a special promotion running for one month with Patriot on any one of these OTG drives. If you order through Newegg.com and use the prmo code OTG4FUN, you get an additional $5 off your purchase. The 16GB is already only $19.99, so you could grab that for just $15. That will be good from now through March 13th 2014, so you have some time.

Source: http://androidspin.com/2014/02/18/review-patriot-stellar-usbmicrousb-3-0-otg-flash-drive/