PNY Duo Link OTG review: A handy USB-C/USB-A flash drive for Android devices

We keep everything on our phones these days. While most of us do back up to the cloud, whether it be iCloud, Google, One Drive, or another service, there are times you may want to offload files from your smartphone to your computer. Sure, you can easily connect a USB cable to your computer, but you might not always have one handy.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Our PNY Duo Link OTG review looks at a USB flash drive with a USB-A and a USB-C end, perfect for transferring files from your mobile device to your computer and vice versa. Read on for our full review!

Specifications

The PNY Duo Link OTG (on-the-go) USB Flash Drive for Android we reviewed has the following features and specifications:

• Free up space on your Android smartphone and tablet by transferring videos, photos and more to PNY Duo Link OTG
• USB Type-C 3.1 connector is compatible with the latest Android smartphones and tablets.
• USB Type-A 3.1 connector is compatible with PC and Mac computers, laptops, Ultrabook’s, printers and more.
• Up to 130MB/s transfer speed so that you spend more time making new memories.
• Sliding design protects Type-C and Type-A connectors when not in use.

What’s in the box

• PNY Duo Link OTG USB Flash Drive

Design

At first glance, there’s not much to the PNY Duo Link OTG USB Flash Drive. Black in colour, it looks like a portable USB drive without the USB connector sticking out. The top of the drive has a diamond-shaped texture to it. On one of the rounded corners are two small holes in which you could feed a small string to attach it to a keyring. Unfortunately, this is not included with the drive. The entire unit is about 2″ long, 7/8″ wide, and about 3/8″ with the connectors are retracted.

A gloss black piece with the PNY logo and storage size (64GB in this case) printed on it sits in the middle of the drive. This piece is actually a slider. When slides in one direction, the USB-A connector is pushed out of one end. When slid in the other direction, the USB-C connector is exposed.

While the PNY Duo Link looks simple enough, the plastic casing does give me pause. It feels a bit flimsy, and I’d be worried that it may crack eventually, depending on where you store it and how you transport it when not in use. Personally, I’d like to see a bit of a thicker/higher quality shell, even if it increased the price a bit.

Ease of Use

For the most part, the PNY Duo Link OTG is pretty easy to use. Simply slide out the connector you need and plug it into your phone or computer. That being said, once it’s plugged into your phone, you may run into some issues. For example, the Google Files app on the Pixel 5 didn’t seem to let me copy to the PNY flash drive, yet the generic Files app did. It was easy enough to figure out but wasn’t as seamless as it should be. That’s not necessarily the fault of the drive, but it is something to keep in mind. However, on a couple of other devices, the built-in file apps made it easy to copy to and from the drive. On the PC, I encountered no issues as the computer recognizes it as an external drive, as it should.

Performance

According to PNY, the Duo Link OTG Flash Drive is capable of read/write speeds of up to 130MB/s. The packaging also indicates that the write speed may be lower. As with any other drive we review, I ran it through a few programs on a computer to check read/write speeds.

AS SSD Seq Read	121.25 MB/s
AS SSD Seq Write	18.33 MB/s
ATTO Disk Benchmark Seq Read (max)	115.58 MB/s
ATTO Disk Benchmark Seq Write (max)	18.85 MB/s
CrystalDiskMark Seq Read (Q8T1)	129.17 MB/s
CrystalDiskMark Seq Write (Q8T1)	17.39 MB/s

During real-world testing, I transferred 40 DNG files (a total of 486MB) from my phone to the drive and then to the computer. I also repeated the same test with a single 2135MB file.

	486MB	2135MB
Phone > Duo Link	6.5s	2m 25s
Duo Link > Phone	5s	33s
Duo Link > PC	4s	20s
PC > Duo Link	6s	2m 03s

As you can extrapolate, the drive handles smaller file write speeds better than larger files. That being said, this drive is acceptable when it comes to read speeds but pretty slow when it comes to write speeds.

Price/Value

The PNY Duo Link USB 3.1 Typ-C OTG Flash Drive has an MSRP of US$17.99 for the 64GB version and $24.99 for the 128GB version. Both are currently on sale for $13.99/$19.99, respectively. At regular price, the value is definitely there, but this handy drive is almost an impulse buy at the current selling price.

Photo Gallery

Wrap-up

Even though the PNY Duo Link has slow write speeds, it does come in handy when you want to transfer files from your Android smartphone to your computer. Sure, you can use a cable, but this USB flash drive is small and compact, making it easy to take with you while on the go.

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