WD – Easystore 128GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive – Blue

WD (Western Digital) has always made good products, and now they are moving in on Samsungs & Sandisks territory of USB Memory Cards and you can’t blame them, they are cheaper and easier to make then Hard Drives or Solid State Drives and the profit margin is significantly higher, thus the recommendation to wait for “SALES” and even then as you go up in size, the value becomes something to consider. For example a 256GB SSD can be had for around $25-$30, where as the same size flash drive is currently ON SALE for $32.99, and then when you step up into the 512GB Flash Drives you are going to exceed $84.99 to $149.99, where on the opposite side of the fence you can get a 1TB Samsung 860 EVO SSD for $99 to $109 and lets not even get into comparing 1TB USB Flash Drives as they can go as high as $499.99, were as you can get a high quality brand like Samsung or SanDisk for $179.99 to $259.99 for a 2TB, and so there are still some pricing issues to be aware of but basically the bottom like is this, do you want to purchase a smaller, easy to carry or transport USB Flash drive, BUT PAY A HIGHER PRICE, OR do you want to buy a External SSD that will typically give you 2 to 8 times the storage capacity for the price and allow slightly more flexibility.
For example, i have noticed that many Blu Ray Players, even ones made in 2019-2020 dont support more then a 32GB or 64GB USB Flash Drive BUT they for some reason DO recognize and support a 1TB, 2TB, and even one of my 3 year old Sony $99 Blu Ray Players will recognize a 4TB external SSD or HDD but that same $99 Sony Blu Ray Player will only recognize a 64GB USB Flash Drive, hence my next order of a Sony 1000Xe Blu Ray Player, which according to the specifications is still maxed out at 128GB USB, but will accept much larger USB SDD’s and USB HDD’s and with that said, it is up to you to decide in paying more for less but getting it in a slightly smaller package is worth the money to you. It should also be noted that many newer External SSD’s and even external HDD’s have shrunk to a smaller size due to advances in memory chip and controller technology as well as on HDD’s higher capacity spindles allowing for smaller drives, and with that i leave you to make up your mind as to which is best, as for warranty, the cell type memory that both USB Flash, and NVMe or SSD drives are based on DOES degrade, so check the amount of read/write times or manufactures suggested hours of operation on the drives you are looking at but as far as this WD 128GB for the $15.99 plus tax Black Friday Sale price, it was pretty much a no brainer, after all, these days what tech can you get for under $20 that you can actually use everyday?
And that’s the VipersHardware tip and take on this drive, Enjoy and Happy Tech Hunting

Navy blue is my absolute favorite color. Just like the flash drive in the picture. The one I received was sky blue.

While it is not advertised that way, these flash drives are manufactured by SanDisk – a company that has successfully manufactured Flash/Thumb Drives for years. This item is dependable and should never give you a problem. Western Digital’s name also gives you assurance of quality. I would not hesitate to purchase these flash drives or hard drives from Western Digital ever.

The actual capacity of this drive is better than other 128 GB drives I’ve used. It’s actual capacity came in at 124,791,980,032 bytes (116 binary GB). Others brands have been as low as 114 binary GB.
As others have said, the write speed is quite slow compared to other USB 3.0 flash drives. It took about 50 minutes to store 65 GBs to the drive. The sustained write speed was 23 MB/sec. Most other USB 3 drives I have used recently average between 50 to 75 MB/sec write speed. So this is about 3 times slower. Read speed was better at about 66 MB/sec, which is only slightly slower than other USB 3.0 drives I have used recently.
It came from the factory in FAT-32 format (unlike another reviewer who indicated it came in ExFAT format). It can be re-formatted to ExFAT if desired, but I would recommend against that if used for video, since smart TVs, Blu-ray players, etc. usually do not recognize drives in the ExFAT format.
Overall, it does what it advertises. It is just slow on the write speed. I would recommend to buy, but only if write speed is not that important to you. If it is, some other devices would be a better choice.