Patriot Supersonic Bolt XT Flash Drive Review (64GB)

Patriot, a longtime leader in storage, has released a new member of their Supersonic family, the Patriot Supersonic Bolt XT. What makes this different from most USB Flash Drives is the built in FIPS 197 compliant hardware based 256bit AES encryption. If that wasn’t enough for you also take into consideration that the drive after failing the password 10 consecutive times formats itself erasing all data. It also is equipped with MLC Memory, which is a solid performer.

Taking a look at the packaging we can see the drive is encased in a hard cardboard, not the cheap stuff most budget drives come in and was actually kind of difficult to open, using a scissors or other sharp object is recommended.

Pricing for the Drive is can be found for $49.99 (16GB)  $69.99 (32GB) and $126.99 (64GB) And is quite a bit more costly than most USB Flash drives although its 5 year warranty is one of the best I’ve seen in a flash drive, and security and peace of mind comes at a cost.

Not only is this drive designed to keep your data safe from prying eyes, it has a very rugged rubber housing and can handle a beating. For a drive all about keeping data safe, this extra measure of safety is a boon and scores extra points with us.

Overall, we like the design of the Patriot Supersonic Bolt XT and is focused on practicality and data safety, while with the splashes of color still looks unique and sets itself apart from the crowd.  The Patriot Vault software will promptly request that you input your password once you plug in the drive. Once typed in, you simply click the Padlock button and your drive will be accessible.

The drive allows you to either change your password or disable the security settings entirely, and a hint button in case you forget your password. The software is pretty basic but does the job, I would have liked the ability to hit the enter key to enter a password but aside from that it is very usable.

Now let’s take a look at some benchmarks after the jump…