When it comes to USB drives, we often time do not think too much about them. They were at one point a mere way to exchange information between rigs, or carry documents with us on a keychain from home to work. As time went on, they evolved in to transferable media styled applications that we can plug into TVs, and use to watch low resolution videos, as well as share pictures from, or use to play music media.The jumps to higher resolutions and larger file sizes brought demand for higher performing devices. The struggle was balancing a reasonable price to what the product has to offer. New standards of USB evolve and release in time, bringing new USB device counterparts to compliment them.The Patriot Supersonic Rage 2 offers a little more than expected after testing, and at half the price of the Kingston Hyper X Savage. After my experience with the Rage 2, it became a no brainer. They can both do the same thing, but the Rage 2 had a little more under the hood (while it did drag in some areas) than the Hyper X. The Hyper X $80-100 price tag for the same 128GB makes me question how good Kingston thinks their product really is (if that sounds challenging, it is meant to). It feels like an alcohol mark up with the Rage 2 being closer in price to a 128GB SSD (and with fairly comparable performance).On the surface the Rage 2 boasts 400/200 Seq Read and Write speeds. Usually in my dealings with Sequential Read/Write speed labeling we see more of a theoretical rounding of the numbers. An OCZ Trion 150 SSD for example, boasts 550R/520W, and this is the top of the 2.5 non NVME Read/Write speeds for an SSD. I have one of these and I clocked it with Crystal Disk more realistically at 490/440. These are still good numbers. Toshiba did not lie about its ‘max capabilities’ since it is near the ceiling as is, but my point is usually you expect the numbers to be lower, and rounded up for advertising purposes.THAT BEING SAID: The Rage 2 clocked on Crystal Disk @ 402 Read, and an astounding 372 write. This is far greater than as advertised on the sequential write portion, and just above as advertised on the read portion. Now, this is applicable using 3.1 Gen 1. If you attempt to get these speeds via a HUB, over a distance, or in a non 3.1 SS 10/GBs interface you will not achieve this.Cool, so what does this mean for people? If you want a high performing media USB for a reasonably awesome price, the Rage 2 is that. I installed games onto it after formatting it to NTFS, creating a root steam folder, saving the games to it. I experienced low-moderate load times in games (better than my FireCuda SSHD) and now had some of my games OFF PC and on their own well performing, uncluttered drive.This can be useful for you as well if you have a gaming laptop with a 3.1 USB or go to a buddy’s house and want to port your games with you. Some tweaking of a directory will need to be performed but it is simple and quick. Saving and watching large UHD+ files is easy, and with enough space for some movies it is great for taking with you on flights or trips so that you have a media library on the go. Most of the media should stream off of the USB fine even with 3.0 USB interface.I did a simple heat test with my fingers after playing some games off of it for a while, there was no need to test further after touching it. It was just barely warmer than room temperature… Notably warmer but not like ‘oh wow that is getting warm/hot’ It stayed very cool. Impressive. My Silicon Power 3.0 USB drive heats up like an oven when moving video files back and forth, but the Rage 2 stayed super cool under stress loads. Whatever Patriot did to accomplish this, kudos. While I don’t think they used a specific plastic or coating, it is well encapsulated and this may add to assisting in cooling.Idealistically it is designed to complement the 3.1 type A ports if you are looking to do things such as game from USB. It’s a neat and fun toy to have and may be perfect for you. If you are someone that just needs a portable drive for small everyday things, save a few extra bucks. This USB is a solid product packed with features (unseen by most not looking) that for the price are pretty stellar. Not all USB drives are created equal…or sold equal… and it is apparent with what Patriot was able to accomplish here.Where the drives falls behind is the random Read/Write testing. I can honestly say it was fairly predictable that it would. Low random speeds can impact performance, but as far as I was able to determine, nothing noteworthy in real time.Other features of the drive are its compact slider, adding to its self discretion desired by most. The drive has a micro loop to place it on a keychain or lanyard (not included). The small size and look I prefer over the large in your face, overly branded Kingston Hyper X Savage. The cherry on top is a five year warranty that tells me Patriot is confident in the Rage 2, and conveys confidence to me. I will likely outgrow this drive before its end of days are met.I would recommend this drive, if anything I described above is what you are interested in. This type of USB drive is not only super affordable for what it has to offer (even for the every user) but gives the more enthusiastic a fun new device to add to their arsenal. I hope this was somewhat helpful! Good luck!