Ars tricked Matt Woodward into running a gauntlet of tests on eight USB flash drives—a gadget you typically only evaluate by price/storage—to discover the secret king of flash drives. It’s an epic piece.

Interestingly, the physically largest drives—the OCZ Throttle (which also has eSATA) and Patriot Xporter—are the absolute fastest, but Ars recommends Super Talent’s Pico B in terms of bang-for-buck. (The Pico C is cheap too, 4GB for $US12 and well-reviewed on Newegg). Kingston’s DataTraveler seems like the pokiest of the bunch. But overall, the current gen of flash drives are good enough across the board, no matter what you get, it’s gonna be decent.

It’s worth poking through the entire rundown, if only to appreciate how much care went into the divining the best piece of something that’s almost the definition of disposal tech. [Ars]