Raspberry Pi Official USB Flash Drives: Are They Worth It?

They did it again. After the official Raspberry Pi SD card and SSD, there are now official USB flash drives. Is that worth more than a generic USB stick with the Raspberry Pi logo on it? Let’s find out.

Raspberry Pi is now selling official USB flash drives to its users. Available in 128GB or 256GB, they provide sequential write speeds up to 150MB/s and other advanced features designed for Raspberry Pi systems.

I bought them right away and am ready to share my first impressions with you. I also did some benchmarks to give you an honest opinion of their worth.

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What Are the Official Raspberry Pi USB Flash Drives?

The Raspberry Pi flash drives are made for Raspberry Pi users. They can be used to run the operating system directly or for extra storage and backups.

Knowing this, you can expect top-notch compatibility with all devices, moderate power consumption, and above-average resilience in typical use cases. Let’s look at them in more detail.

Key Technical Specifications

If you are one of those who like numbers and technical jargon, here are the product details from the company’s website:

To sum it up, these flash drives should be much faster than most USB drives. They’re priced fairly, a bit higher than many USB drives, but still comparable to the price of SD cards. Through real use, we will see how it compares, but on paper, it looks interesting.

Also, keep in mind the difference in expected performance between the two versions. Even if you don’t think you need 256 GB, it might be worth buying the biggest one right away.

Note: My usual SanDisk USB drives are half the price and advertised at 150 MB/s too, but that’s the peak read speed, not the sustained write speed. I’ll fill you in on that later, but to clarify my price comparison note.

What Makes Them Different From Standard USB Sticks?

At first glance, these flash drives look pretty much like any other USB stick. It has a full metal design, a sleek Raspberry Pi logo, and the size engraved on the side. There is also a hole to attaching it to a keyring or lanyard, but nothing is included.

If you’ve read the official announcement, you may have noticed that it includes many abbreviations and complicated words that you may not understand. Are they just buzzwords, or do they actually matter?

I researched for you. Here’s a quick glossary of what you need to know.

Pseudo-SLC Cache

…the Raspberry Pi Flash Drive employs a small reservation of pseudo-SLC cache to improve performance under burst-y write workloads…

Pseudo-SLC cache is a trick used by storage makers to boost speed for short bursts.

Here’s how it works: a portion of the drive temporarily behaves like speedy Single-Level Cell (SLC) memory, delivering quick performance bursts until the cache fills up.

The bulk of the storage uses QLC (Quad-Level Cell) memory, which allows higher capacity but degrades faster with heavy use. The Raspberry Pi drive uses QLC and SLC to minimize the downsides.

It’s basically a standard trick to make cheaper flash memory seem faster during everyday tasks. Just keep this in mind when comparing drives (sustained speed and peak speed are absolutely not the same thing, and marketing loves to show those impressive burst numbers).

This isn’t exactly groundbreaking technology. Raspberry Pi is simply highlighting a feature that most modern USB drives already use.

SMART Health Reporting

…these drives support SSD-style SMART health reporting to help you to manage the device lifespan…

SMART is a standard feature on most regular storage drives. It stands for “Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology,” and it basically tells you if your drive is working as expected.

It helps predict failures before they happen. You usually find it on hard drives and SSDs, not on USB sticks. To be honest, most users don’t really need it because we know USB sticks are unreliable. You don’t keep essential data on USB drives.

But when you start using USB drives as your main storage on Raspberry Pi (especially for the operating system), it makes sense to have one.

You can check this on any computer using CrystalDiskInfo or a similar tool. On Linux or the Raspberry Pi directly, you can install smartmontools to get an assessment.

TRIM Support

…supporting TRIM operations…

A trim command lets an operating system tell a storage device which blocks of data are no longer in use. It’s used mostly on SSDs to optimize garbage collection, which helps future writing operations to stay fast.

So, you’ll get more consistent performance overall when you run Raspberry Pi OS on this drive, without doing anything on your end. The OS automatically sends TRIM commands in the background.

This also helps extend the drive’s lifespan. TRIM isn’t just a buzzword; it’s a practical feature for Raspberry Pi users. You won’t find it in most regular USB drives (which prioritize cost over durability).

Sustained Write Speeds

…It can sustain a write speed of 75MB/s (128GB variant) or 150MB/s (256GB variant)…

I mentioned it briefly, but I think it’s worth repeating.

In the announcement, Raspberry Pi mentions a sustained write speed between 75 MB/s and 150 MB/s. This is essential to understand.

• Most manufacturers mention the best-case speed (in general, the best reading speed you can expect).
• Raspberry Pi markets its USB drives with a focus on their sustained write speed, which is key for daily use on a Raspberry Pi.

This is a rare case of transparency we can appreciate, but we’ll see how it performs in real use.

Low-Power USB 3.0 States

…They will also autonomously enter low-power USB 3.0 states when idle….

Nothing revolutionary here in theory, but it’s worth mentioning.

All USB 3.0 devices technically support power-saving states to reduce energy consumption when the drive is idle. However, not all drives implement this feature effectively. What is different here is that the Raspberry Pi flash drive autonomously switches to this state.

This is particularly useful if you’re running your Raspberry Pi on battery power or dealing with a limited power supply due to multiple accessories. By reducing power draw when idle, the drive generates less heat and undergoes less stress, which can help extend its lifespan.

It’s too soon to say if it’s a must-have feature or just a nice-to-have. But if you’re using a portable Raspberry Pi setup, this might be interesting to you.

Real-World Performance Testing on Raspberry Pi

Ok, enough theory for today. Now that I’ve cleared up all the jargon, let’s try these drives in real conditions.

I’m not going to bombard you with the usual benchmark numbers that don’t really mean much to most people. Instead, I’ll mention the major differences you’ll notice right away when using these drives.

How Long It Takes to Flash an OS

This might not be as important to you as it is to me, since you probably aren’t flashing new drives every day. But I think it’s a good first test to see if a media storage device is fast or not.

When you flash Raspberry Pi OS to an SD card, you’re pushing as many files to it as possible, so you’re basically testing its writing speed. Once the system image is downloaded and cached on your computer, it’s a pretty good indicator of the media performance.

So, let’s do a few tests with different storage types and models.

For reference, flashing Raspberry Pi OS Desktop on the official SD card takes about 3 minutes, and it’s one of the fastest solutions if you don’t include SSDs.

So I did the same test with the new USB flash drives and other USB sticks I had available:

• Raspberry Pi flash drive (256 GB): 49 seconds
• Raspberry Pi flash drive (128 GB): 65 seconds
• Metal SanDisk drive: 280 seconds
• Plastic SanDisk drive: 600 seconds+

Overall, the new USB flash drive is about three times faster for flashing an OS than the official SD card (which is pretty fast already) and at least ten times faster than the cheap USB sticks that aren’t built for this.

Even if you’re not switching up the operating systems regularly, it’s a pretty significant change. It seems like this flash drive is more than just a marketing gimmick. But let’s do a few other tests before giving you a definitive opinion.

How Long Raspberry Pi Takes to Boot

The second test I like to do is to see how long it takes for the Raspberry Pi to boot. Remember when we replaced hard drives with SSDs? That was the most noticeable change. With an SSD, your OS boots instantly (even on Windows).

Anyway, the results for this test were way less impressive.

It takes about 30 seconds to boot Raspberry Pi OS (full reboot) with the official SD card I use for reference, and it was about the same with the new USB drives.

Even with my cheap USB sticks, it rarely took more than 40 seconds. This is likely because boot time depends mostly on the reading speed, and all USB drives have about the same.

In short, 30 seconds for a good SD card or USB drive, maybe 40 seconds for a cheap USB stick, and about 20 seconds for an SSD. That’s not a good enough reason to change your media storage. Let’s move on.

How Fast Archives Extract on Raspberry Pi

The last test I like is extracting files from an archive. I usually use the Linux kernel for this because it’s a good mix of small and large files. It should test the writing speed in a way that speaks to us very clearly (unlike abstract numbers from benchmark tools).

Basically, the test is: how long does it take to extract all files from this big file?
The lower, the better.

Want to try this at home? Here’s how I did it:
wget https://github.com/torvalds/linux/archive/refs/heads/master.zip
sync && echo 3 | sudo tee /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
time unzip master.zip

Results:

	Time to unzip
1 – NVMe (SSD)	15.9s
2 – Raspberry Pi USB flash drive	16.2s
3 – Metal SanDisk USB	23.3s
4 – Raspberry Pi Official SD card	58.6s
5 – Plastic SanDisk USB	182.5s

After looking at these results, I noticed a couple of interesting things:

• In real use cases, when we need good writing speed (extracting files), this new USB flash drive and an SSD are pretty much neck-in-neck.
• Good USB drives (like the Metal SanDisk) are actually decent on this test.
• Even if the official SD card is faster than other SD cards, it’s still way slower than SSDs and good USB drives.
• I learned from those tests that not all USB drives are equal.
  I should avoid buying cheap USB sticks for Raspberry Pi use.

To sum it up, this new USB flash drive from Raspberry Pi is an excellent solution in all my real-use tests, whether you care more about reading or writing speed.

Note: it’s during this test that all the tech features I mentioned earlier really shine. Cheap USB drives create files in small batches. They need frequent pauses to keep up. It’s pretty obvious by looking at the terminal output that only the Raspberry Pi flash drive can keep a steady writing speed.

Tip: Command lines can be a pain to memorize. I put the essential Linux commands on a printable cheat sheet so you don't have to keep googling them. You can grab the PDF here if you want to save some time.

Official Raspberry Pi USB Drives vs. Other Options

We have now confirmed that these new Raspberry Pi USB drives are a solid option in terms of performance. But before deciding if that should be your new default, let’s compare your options.

10 years ago, the advice was pretty straightforward: buy a good SD card.
Now, there are tons of SD cards, USB boot is supported, you can use SSDs of different types and plug them up in different ways. It’s not that easy anymore. So, what should you do?

VS MicroSD Cards

I bet most of you are still using micro SD cards for your Raspberry Pi setup. And there is nothing wrong with that if it works for you.

SD cards are more compact, don’t use up a USB port, and are a bit more foolproof for some users and use cases (you don’t accidentally unplug them).

I’d also mention that, depending on your Raspberry Pi model and setup, USB drives tend to have power issues you won’t experience with an SD card. Remember this when you’re making your decision.

Just keep in mind that you could get better performance (and generally more available space) by upgrading to those kinds of USB drives, for a similar cost.

VS Standard USB Flash Drives

Now, if you’ve already been using USB sticks to boot your Raspberry Pi (or even as a backup), this new product deserves all your attention.

As I fully realized when doing these tests for you, performance varies a lot between models.

Until now, I was mostly buying USB drives based on price and convenience. I look for small, colored drives (helps me remember what’s on it), that don’t have any complicated plug systems.
I’ll definitely be changing my criteria a bit from now on, and likely only use Raspberry Pi USB sticks.

If your current USB stick is lacking, this is a great upgrade that won’t break the bank. If you’re also thinking about upgrading your system version, now might be the time.

VS NVMe SSDs

For more demanding projects, like running a server or database 24/7, an NVMe SSD is still the best option. They’re faster, more durable, and usually offer better long-term reliability.

The new official USB drives come surprisingly close to the SSD results in daily use, but I’d still keep my SSDs on my home servers.

If you’re looking for top-notch performance and long-term reliability, an SSD is still the way to go. But if you’re on a budget and can’t afford an SSD setup with the M2 HAT and all that, the Raspberry Pi flash drives are a solid option.

Related: How to Migrate From SD Card to NVMe SSD on Raspberry Pi

Should You Buy the Official Raspberry Pi USB Drives?

I’ve been switching back and forth between SD cards and USB drives over the years (I mostly stopped using USB because of power issues on Raspberry Pi 4 models).

Now, it looks like power issues have been solved with the Raspberry Pi 5 model. So these new flash drives arrive just at the right time, motivating me to use USB as my main storage again. But what about you?

Overall, this Raspberry Pi flash drive is probably the best media storage option available right now, just behind a full SSD setup. If you don’t mind using an extra USB port, having an external device and slightly increased power consumption, don’t think twice about it. Get one and enjoy.

Here’s how I see it:

• Great choice if you want better performance than a microSD card or any other USB stick, without the cost or setup of an SSD.
• Still worth it if you’re starting a new project and want something fast and reliable (or reinstalling your OS for other reasons).
• Maybe skip it if you’re happy with your current SD card setup, don’t need the extra speed, or don’t like this media format (external, USB port, power issues).

When I first saw the announcement, I assumed it was just another marketing move. But doing this test changed my mind.

After trying it out, I have to admit that it’s a solid product. I’ll probably use it a lot. It hits the sweet spot between price, performance, and reliability, which should work well for most people.
If you try it yourself, let me know how it goes!

It’s available from all official resellers. Check the official website to find the reseller in your country.

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