Smartphone and tablet use has only increased in the last year, and sharing files between your mobile devices and your PC hasn't gotten a lot easier. The Kingston DataTraveler microDuo 3.0 (64GB) ($50) should make things a little simpler, however, with a flash drive that boasts both a USB 3.0 connection and a micro USB connector for plugging into your Android device. It's a speedier version of the previous Editors' Choice Kingston DataTraveler microDuo (32GB)($49.95 at Amazon), letting you take all your files on a drive for all your devices, but now with faster performance. It's the best option we've seen for dual-function flash drives, making the Kingston DataTraveler microDuo 3.0 (64GB)($13.99 at Amazon) our Editors' Choice for mobile-friendly portable storage.

Design and Features
The basic design of the microDuo 3.0 is largely unchanged from the previous 2.0 model, but there wasn't much that could be changed in the first place. The biggest difference is the switch from USB 2.0 to USB 3.0, which allows faster data transfer. The drive consists of a standard USB 3.0 plug on one end, and a micro USB connection on the other, protected by a black plastic cover. The cover folds up 90 degrees to expose the tiny micro USB plug, with a locking hinge that keeps the cover closed when not in use. The one other significant change is purely cosmetic, with the cover featuring a slightly different, stylized, geometric design, with opaque, black plastic instead of the transparent plain cover used on the microDuo 2.0. The micro USB connector is unchanged.

A small loop on the back of the drive body lets you
attach the microDuo 3.0 to a lanyard or keychain, which is highly recommended. The tiny drive measures just 1.08 by 0.65 by 0.34 inches (HWD), making it even smaller that the aptly named Kingston DataTraveler Mini 3.0 (16GB)( at Amazon), and extremely easy to lose in a pocket or on a moderately cluttered desk.

Our review unit has a 64GB capacity, but Kingston also offers the drive in 16GB and 32GB varieties. There is no software or encryption preinstalled, and the drive is preformatted to FAT32, making it compatible with all major PC operating systems (Windows/Mac/Linux) and Android devices (4.0 and higher) out of the box. The drive is not compatible with Apple iPhone and iPad devices, since they use a proprietary connection.

The one caveat for phones and tablets, however, is that they must offer USB OTG (On The Go) support, which most current devices do, though it may not be enabled by default on your device. You may also need to download some sort of file manager. Most current devices include one, but for those that don't, Kingston recommends ES File Explorer.

Pricing and Performance
The 64GB model that we reviewed has a list price of $50, which works out to about 78 cents per gigabyte. The smaller capacities are slightly more expensive, with the 32GB model selling for $26, or 81 cents per gigabyte, and the 16GB model selling for $16, or $1 per gigabyte. By comparison, the Leef Bridge 3.0($6.81 at Amazon), another USB-to-micro-USB drive, sells for $1.12 per gigabyte, while the previous Kingston DataTraveler microDuo (32GB)—the USB 2.0 version—sells for 93 cents per gigabyte. This makes the microDuo 3.0 one of the more affordable storage options I've seen for mobile devices. Kingston covers the device with a 5-year warranty, with free technical support.

Thanks to that USB 3.0 connection, it's
also one of the fastest mobile drives. Testing the full-size USB 3.0 on a PC with our timed file transfer test, the microDuo 3.0 averaged write speeds of 38MBps and read speeds of 12MBps. By comparison, the Leef Bridge 3.0 was slightly slower, with 35MBps (read) and 8MBps (write).

Under USB 2.0, the drive offered slightly slower performance, averaging 31MBps (read) and 9MBps (write). Again, this was ever-so-slightly ahead of the Leef Bridge 3.0, which averaged 31MBps (read) and 7MBps (write). In general, transfer speeds were much slower when connected via micro USB, but the actual speeds varied widely from one device to the next. Reading media off of the drive is always fairly quick, but transferring those same files back and forth can be a little slow.

Conclusion
The Kingston DataTraveler microDuo 3.0 takes everything we love about the previous iteration and improves it with USB 3.0 capability and a better price-per-gigabyte ratio. For anyone who needs to share files between PCs and mobile devices—and that's nearly everyone these days—it's the best option we've seen, making the Kingston DataTraveler microDuo 3.0 (64GB) our Editors' Choice for mobile-friendly USB storage.

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