SanDisk Launches 256GB Flash Drive and Wireless Stick for iPhone and iPad

256GB and USB 2.0 should never co-exist in the same product, unless it has USB 3.0 and 2.0 for backward compatibility. Who thought that adding wireless at the expense of USB speed was a good idea to do?

Just in time for apple to remove lightning as it's port.

@macduke thank you for the correction. What weckart has stated above is what I was trying to get at. But i very much agree, for over $200, is quite ridiculous.

No problem. Sometimes people forget how freaking slow USB 2.0 really is. It was released 17 years ago! I remember it was still fairly new in the first PC I built when I was a kid back in 2002 because I think only some of the ports were USB 2.0 and I had to buy a PCI expansion card to get more. And now I'm getting PTSD flashbacks of that horrible machine, lol.
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If the purpose is storing music and videos that you can watch, then USB 2.0 is plenty fast enough. Very few movies take even 2 MB/s. And if I fill a 256 GB drive with movies from my Mac, I'm not going to wait for it to finish even with USB 3.0. I'll start the copy and do other things. Eventually it's done.

It's not really about consuming content as much as it is about how long it takes to fill it with content. If you're loading up 256GB worth of movies for a trip, at a best speed of 35-40MB/s, that will take you 109-125 minutes. That's still a lot of video, so for people who just load it up once and forget about it, it might be fine. But USB 3.0 controllers and faster flash isn't exactly expensive nowadays. Even this well reviewed, high end 256GB flash drive ('https://www.amazon.com/PNY-Elite-256GB-Premium-Flash/dp/B01E17LNNU/') in a premium enclosure that does 400MB/s read and 180MB/s write is only $89, and you can fill it in 24 minutes. Or they make a 512GB version ('https://www.amazon.com/PNY-Elite-512GB-Premium-P-FD512PRO-GE/dp/B01E17LOL6/') that does 250MB/s read for only $224 and 256GB of it could be filled in 17 minutes. You get twice the storage space and six times the write speed for $55 less. And MFi isn't going to cost anywhere near $55 per unit. Or the $190 markup over the 256GB version. It's a massive ripoff, and they should be ashamed for selling a super slow USB 2.0 device for that much money. If it was way cheaper, then I could maybe understand. Maybe. But in 2017 it saves them pennies to use USB 2.0.

If the purpose is storing music and videos that you can watch, then USB 2.0 is plenty fast enough. Very few movies take even 2 MB/s. And if I fill a 256 GB drive with movies from my Mac, I'm not going to wait for it to finish even with USB 3.0. I'll start the copy and do other things. Eventually it's done.

Yes, but with UHD 4K becoming a thing even on smaller devices, that's likely to change in the near-ish future.

I don't think the bottleneck is the flash memory. I've seen USB 2.0 push at most 50MiB/s (bytes, not bits). For whatever reason, it's always slower than that on flash drives. I've seen USB 3.0 flash drives push 80MiB/s, and they have much faster read/writes when plugged into USB 3.0 slots instead of 2.0.
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Watch them replace it, but not with USB-C.

Yeah, didn't we here recently something about an "Ultra Accessory Connector" (UAC)...??
https://arstechnica.co.uk/apple/2017/02/apple-uac-port

"smaller than Lightning or USB-C, that could be used to charge devices or transfer data."

I don't really get these, you have to use the typically clunky manufacturer apps.

This won't be any use to me until iOS has integral support for extended storage via lighting.

256GB and USB 2.0 should never co-exist in the same product, unless it has USB 3.0 and 2.0 for backward compatibility. Who thought that adding wireless at the expense of USB speed was a good idea to do?

I have three of the Connect sticks up to 64GB capacity. They max out at 10MB/s write speed via USB. Yup, you read right. Adding USB 3.0 would be the proverbial 'putting lipstick on a pig' since the NAND chips used are so low budget and slow. The wireless bit works well, if slowly, otherwise. Fine for uploading small images but not much fun for large sized files. I honestly do not see the value in high storage capacities until Sandisk beefs up the wireless and I/O speeds considerably.