Lexar Lexar 4GB JumpDrive Lightning USB Drive

Reviewed by: yanusbfd

Duration of ownership:

Strengths: Speed, speed, speed, and, oh, did I mention speed

Weaknesses: Kind of biggish, stainless steel finish shows finger prints

Overall Evaluation: Lexar's JumpDrive Lightning has been around for a couple of years now, and recently, I had the opportunity to acquire the 4GB model for a price somewhere around $10/GB after rebate. So, I figured "What the heck," I need to see what the hype is all about. After all, for Lexar to tag this USB flash drive with the descriptor "Lightning", it's got to be fast, right? My skepticism here is that Lexar JumpDrives, until recently, have always been fast. For years, my original model 256 MB JumpDrive 2.0 Pro, one of the first USB 2.0 flash drives available, has been faster than most anything else out there. Then, about a year and a half ago, I acquired my first 512 MB Lexar JumpDrive, a Secure II model, and it took things to a new level, being about 50% faster than the 256 MB JumpDrive 2.0 Pro. In fact, after subsequent acquisitions of Lexar JumpDrives of various sizes, I found there was an obvious speed limit of sorts. Units of 256 MB or less were about two thirds as fast as those of 512 MB and larger. Mind you, either way, Lexar was still faster than just about anything else out there of the same size, but I was really surprised by the big jump in speed that came with the 512 MB and larger devices. So, given this history, could the JumpDrive Lightning be faster still? I pose this question, because within the past 6 months, Lexar drives have undergone a disappointing transformation. I'm not sure with what device revision it happened, but the commonly promoted-by-rebate Lexar JumpDrives (Secure II and FireFly) started getting slower. Much slower. In 2006 and early 2007, 512 MB and larger Lexar JumpDrive Secure II and FireFly models could be guaranteed to run my 500+ JPEG file copy test in around 15 seconds. Out of the blue, these same units started running FOUR TIMES SLOWER! The first time it happened, I thought I just had a defective unit, and returned it for a replacement, which did work fine. Next time around, however, the results were the same, and two replacements didn't change things. Apparently, Lexar decided that their mainline JumpDrives provided too much bang for the buck. Either they started using slower NAND flash memory, or they modified their controller design (or possibly switched to a third party design) to reduce its cost and, consequently, performance. I can think of no other explanation for the massive fall-off in performance. The JumpDrive Lightning is a beast of sorts. Made of stainless steel, it's quite heavy, and is as long as the original JumpDrive 2.0 Pro at 3". Width and thickness are 7/8" and 3/8", respectively, making the Lightning one of the larger flash drives currently on those market. Fortunately, considering the $90 average street price that it commands, the performance does not come up short. This does appear to be one of the fastest USB flash drives on the market. I generally run two real world tests to gauge the speed of a USB drive. First off, I copy a directory of CD cover scans consisting of 521 files in 24 folders totaling 66.3 MB from my hard drive to the USB flash drive. The 4 GB JumpDrive Lightning takes 9 seconds to do this, matching the 1 and 2 GB ATP ToughDrives, my current benchmark units and among the fastest USB flash drives available. Second, I copy a 310 MB compressed CD ISO from my hard drive to the USB flash drive. The 4 GB JumpDrive Lightning really shines here, pulling this off in 15 seconds, faster than anything I've used previously, including the ATP ToughDrives which take just under 20 seconds. Note that I don't test USB flash drive read performance. Write performance is always the bottleneck, and I've found that write performance correlates pretty well with read performance, e.g. fast writing = fast reading. So, for me at least, this is the new reigning performance champion among USB flash drives. The capacity is huge and the speed is out the door. The only complaints I can scrape up are the premium price tag and the physically imposing size. Being made from just stainless steel, I suspect the only thing the JumpDrive Lightning probably can't do is survive being run over by a car like the SanDisk Cruzer Titanium.