I reviewed the PNY Elite-X Fit — it's small, cheap, and surprisingly useful

PNY Elite-X Fit: 30-second review

At present, I'm seeing a range of high-quality premium flash drives that offer both capacity and speed. In fact, I recently looked at the superb PNY USB 3.2 flash drive that excels in both areas — capacity and speed. Following much the same design is the Elite-X Fit Type-C USB 3.2 flash drive, just smaller and even more lightweight.

First and foremost, the physical dimensions of the drive are small, as are the capacities, which means that this drive is far more suitable for transferring documents compared to media files. While it would be perfectly good for editing documents from Word, Excel, and PowerPoint directly from the drive, it would be less suitable for editing media such as photos or videos.

At up to 200MB/s transfer read and 100MB/s write speeds, the drive is perfectly suited to Word documents and other smaller files but can be a little sluggish when it comes to images and video, although the 256GB of storage does offer plenty of space.

Build quality is also very different from the Pro Elite V3, with the body being plastic rather than metal. However, it retains the nice design features, such as the retractable connector and texture.

Where the Pro Elite V3 was designed for professionals who need a high-quality, high-performance compact drive, the Elite-X Fit Type-C USB 3.2 flash drive is aimed at everyone else who just needs a cheap and reliable USB flash drive to transport files from one place to another.

PNY Elite-X Fit: Price & availability

The Elite-X Fit Type-C USB 3.2 flash drive is available directly from the PNY.com website and is also widely available from most online retailers, including Amazon.

• Score: 5/5

PNY Elite-X Fit: Design & build

When I looked at the PNY Pro Elite V3, one of the things that stood out to me about the flash drive was the design. It's a really nice, high-premium unit made of metal with a push-pull cap. This enabled you to quickly reveal the connector to plug into your machine or smartphone and here, once again, with the Elite-X Fit, we have much the same design, just on a far smaller and cheaper scale.

When it comes to size and weight, this device really is extremely compact, weighing in at 3g and measuring 27 x 15mm. That lanyard loop will easily attach to a keyring without adding too much if any, noticeable weight.

Visually, the two drives look similar, with the Pro Elite V3 being longer and slightly wider compared with the Elite-X Fit Type-C, which is far shorter. As you lift both flash drives up, you can really start to feel the difference. While the Elite-X Fit has the same texture and holds the loop, it is all made out of plastic, so while high-quality, it doesn't quite match the higher-end unit.

Likewise, the body is also made from high-quality plastic, but the mechanism, of how the cap works, is exactly the same.

• Design & build: 4/5

PNY Elite-X Fit: Features

As with the device, the feature list is also pretty small. Essentially, this is a small and lightweight USB flash drive that's designed to be a quick go-to whenever you need to transfer a document or backup files and data on a small portable drive. Really, simplicity is at the heart of this drive — there are no software additions such as security, backup, or recovery. It is intended purely as expansion storage.

As the device is exceptionally small,that's is only one connector type — USB Type-C — and that is 3.2 Gen 1. While the drive is small, it still enables relatively decent transfer speeds, with read speeds of up to 200MB/second and write speeds of up to 100MB/second.

Another advantage of the USB Type-C interface is that you are able to connect to a huge variety of devices, including mobile phones, tablet PCs, Macs, and anything that supports USB Type-C expansion. It also means that you've got wide compatibility, so essentially, almost any device with a USB Type-C port will recognise this device as expansion storage — plug it in, and it's ready to use.

• Features: 4/5

PNY Elite-X Fit: Performance

High-speed transfers and huge capacity aren't at the heart of this flash drive — rather, it's about simple functionality that enables you to store and transfer files with minimum fuss. In use, the drive couldn't be easier: simply plug it in, and whether it's a Mac or PC, the drive is recognised and instantly accessible. If you want to reformat it in a file system other than ExFAT, then you can through your chosen OS. Likewise, if you want to add OS-level encryption, this can also be applied when you reformat the drive.

Otherwise, it's all plug-and-play, essentially ready to go on arrival. The fact that like many drives of this type it arrives in the ExFAT file format also means that it'll work on both Mac and PC systems.

On the compatibility front, during the test I used the drive with both Mac and PC systems and it was instantly recognised on all machines without issue. Copying folders and files to the drive was relatively quick, with the write speed of 100MB per second seeming about right. I could instant tell from the progress bar that it's slower than many of the more modern portable drives I've tested in recent times, but to be honest, if you're just transferring Word documents or Excel files, then this speed is negligible and perfectly OK.

In reality, the transfer speeds, when it comes to performance, are unremarkable, but this is an entry-level USB flash drive.

One feature that I was interested in testing out with such a cheap drive that is so small and lightweight is how durable it is. For the duration of the test, it remained on my keyring, which I spent most of the time in my pocket over the test period of a couple of weeks. Over that time, although subjected to knocks and bashes, it had little to no effect on the performance, and the drive worked just as well at the end of the two weeks as it did at the beginning.

Another durability test I wanted to try — especially as this has no durability ratings — was whether it would survive being posted and essentially returned back to myself. I popped it in the post with a standard envelope via Royal Mail and made the circuit from the post office back to my house in around four days. Upon opening the envelope and testing the USB key again, it worked absolutely fine.

So, whilst this small flash drive is essentially unremarkable, its design is extremely elegant — following the same lines as the superb Pro Elite V3, just in a smaller, lighter, and cheaper form, and it's pretty durable, which is definitely good.

• Performance: 3.5/5

Should you buy the PNY Elite-X Fit?

There are times when you don't really need technology to be as large or fast as it can be, and the PNY Elite-X Fit is a perfect example of this. The capacity of 256GB is relatively large and perfect for a bit of expansion storage for a laptop or smartphone. The USB Type-C connector enables plenty of flexibility over the type of device it can connect to.

While the drive can be used as expansion storage for an iPhone or Android phone it's only for access and storing files. If you think that this seems like a great option for unlocking the iPhones ProRes abilities then unfortunately, it's not fast enough to facilitate that option.

Likewise, if you have a laptop with limited internal storage, then the small 256GB edition is going to give you a small and handy expansion boost.

Even though the drives transfer rates are limited, if you have some HD footage, it is possible to edit that footage from this drive in applications such as CapCut on your laptop — although it's probably best to transfer that footage across, as you will be pushing the abilities of this small drive.

Ultimately, this USB flash drive is designed to be small, compact, high-quality, easy to use, and fully accessible. It should be an option that you can always keep with you for those times when you need a little bit of extra storage.

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