For parents seeking a playful option to help children store or move digital files, the SanDisk Crayola USB drive offers an appealing and engaging solution. However, its data writing capabilities lag significantly, becoming especially sluggish beyond a few gigabytes of content.

As someone often described as youthful at heart, I fall squarely into the demographic that SanDisk targets with this product. Setting aside any skepticism, the drive's innovative approach stands out.

Shaping a solid-state storage device to resemble a crayon provides a novel, enjoyable twist that helps it differentiate from typical options—a feature that proves practical in certain scenarios, as detailed ahead. That said, its initial writing speed reaches only 150MBps, declining to 80MBps after processing just a few gigabytes, which is disappointing.

Continue reading for deeper insights, followed by a selection of top external storage alternatives for context.

True to its inspiration, the Crayola drive adopts a slightly thicker crayon form. Precisely, it spans 3.22 inches in length, with a 0.67-inch diameter at the cap and 0.62 inches along the primary body, which features a subtle flat rear surface for better balance.

A protective cap conceals the USB Type-C port. Although SanDisk provides no official resistance ratings for water or dust, the enclosed design likely withstands typical handling. Keep in mind the cap detaches fully, and the product carries a warning against use by children younger than three years old.

My review unit came in Cerulean Blue, with alternatives including Electric Lime and Mango Tango shades (green and orange hues). A Vivid Violet variant is forthcoming. Each color ensures high visibility, and the drive weighs just 10 grams or 0.35 ounces.

Unlike many portable USB drives, this model includes a five-year limited warranty, though specifics like endurance limits in terabytes written remain undisclosed.

Given the drive's notably unhurried writing performance, users are unlikely to push its durability boundaries anytime soon.

On the affordability front, this device suits both young users and those with a playful side without straining budgets: the 64GB capacity costs $18, 128GB goes for $23, and the 256GB model evaluated here retails at $33.

These rates come bundled with a three-month trial of the Crayola Create & Play application.

Unfortunately, the economical pricing mirrors its capabilities. Reading occurs at a respectable 400MBps, but writing begins at a modest 150MBps and falls to 80MBps after surpassing roughly 4GB of transferred material.

To put this in perspective, a capable 5Gbps external SSD typically achieves about 550MBps for both reading and writing, while even a swift 6Gbps SATA 3.5-inch hard disk drive sustains 250MBps. Due to the modest size and underwhelming writes, standard testing protocols were adjusted, and no comparative graphs were generated given the lack of similar benchmarks.

CrystalDiskMark benchmarks across varying file sizes are outlined below. Remember, one MiB equals 2^20 or 1,048,576 bytes, contrasting with a MB at 10^6 or 1,000,000 bytes; similarly, GiB is 2^30 or 1,073,741,824 bytes versus GB at 10^9 or 1,000,000,000 bytes.

With a 512MiB workload, results remained adequate at 143MBps—decent, if not impressive.

The 1GiB test showed a minor improvement in throughput.

Peak writing occurred during the 4GiB evaluation.

Decline set in with the 8GiB set, marking a noticeable slowdown. This volume represents a modest amount for media files like videos. Slower post-cache performance appears in other models too, such as the Addlink P50, which maintains 1GBps writes for hundreds of gigabytes before faltering.

In practical scenarios, transferring a 48GB file via FastCopy required just over 11 minutes, or 662 seconds—tenfold the time of recent thumb or portable drives tested here.

Further endurance trials seemed unnecessary, except verifying the file read back in 127 seconds. Clearly, this drive suits occasional small-batch writes rather than bulk operations exceeding a few gigabytes.

Realistically, such constraints accommodate numerous everyday uses. For instance, I plan to repurpose it as a bootable Macrium Reflect Free drive for frequent system imaging on test machines, thanks to its unmistakable look amid my standard gear.

The one-time slow write during creation is tolerable, the whimsical style invites light teasing without issue, and reading suffices for booting.

Provided expectations align with its pronounced writing drawbacks, this drive merits consideration. Its cheerful vibe and bold aesthetics aid quick location, particularly for write-infrequent, read-heavy applications.

Benchmarking employs Windows 11 24H2 64-bit on a PCIe 4.0 Samsung 990 Pro SSD within an Asus Z890-Creator WiFi motherboard supporting PCIe 4.0 and 5.0. The system features a Core Ultra i5 225 processor paired with 128GB total from two 64GB Crucial DDR5-5600MHz sticks.

Integrated 20Gbps USB and Thunderbolt 5 ports are onboard, alongside Intel's CPU/GPU graphics. Test PCIe 5.0 SSDs mount via an Asus Hyper M.2 x16 Gen5 adapter in a PCIe 5.0 slot.

Evaluations include CrystalDiskMark 8.0.4 (and 9.0), AS SSD 2.0, and ATTO 4.0 synthetics, with only the first reported here to conserve space. Real-world checks involve 48GB transfers and 450GB writes via Windows Explorer, plus admin-run FastCopy for peak speeds.

A 25Gbps dual-SSD RAID 0 on the Asus Hyper M.2 x16 Gen5 serves as the counterpart in transfers, replacing prior RAM disk use for 48GB tests.

Drives format to NTFS and TRIM fresh for peak results. Everyday filling may reduce speeds from reduced NAND caching and related elements, though modern SSDs with advanced controllers and high-end NAND mitigate this.

Methodologies update regularly, so results differ from past reviews; only intra-article comparisons hold fully, as they use identical setups.