The listing for this drive says 400MB/s in its title. That number is true, and it only tells you half the story. Samsung’s own data sheet lists the 128GB BAR Plus at up to 400 MB/s for reading and up to 60 MB/s for writing. The gap is nearly seven to one. If you only remember one thing from this review, make it that one.
Product image from the Amazon listing.
I like the BAR Plus as a tough, small drive that you fill slowly and read quickly. I would not buy it to move large amounts of data on a deadline.
The model here is the 128GB Titan Gray, part number MUF-128BE4/AM. Samsung also sells a Champagne Silver version, and the line has been on sale for years. Older write-ups quote 300 MB/s for reading, so some of the reports below may describe earlier stock.
What Writing at 60 Really Means
Sixty megabytes a second sounds fine until you do the sums. At that speed, a 10 GB video takes nearly 3 minutes to copy on. Filling all 128 GB takes about 36 minutes. And 60 MB/s is Samsung’s best case, measured under its own test conditions.
Related reading
Independent tests of the 128GB model are few. Hi-Tech’s 2018 review of a 128GB BAR Plus measured 265 MB/s read and 46 MB/s write in CrystalDiskMark. At 46 MB/s, a full drive takes about 46 minutes.
Other capacities show the same shape. StorageReview tested the 256GB model in 2018 and got 283 MB/s sequential read and 62 MB/s sequential write. It noted a clear step up from the older BAR, while saying this was “not the fastest option.” SSD-Tester measured the 64GB model at about 310 MB/s read and 37 MB/s write, with real copy tests at 30 to 34 MB/s. That one is rated by Samsung at only 30 MB/s write, so skip the 64GB if you care about this at all.
Samsung’s sheet rates the 256GB and 512GB drives at up to 110 MB/s write, close to double the 128GB. If you write a lot and the price gap is small, the bigger drive is the better buy for speed alone. That is my main piece of buying advice here.
Reading is a happier story. In those tests the BAR Plus read at around 265 to 310 MB/s. A movie or a folder of photos comes off the drive much faster than it went on. So it fits work where you load once and read many times: a music library for a car, a set of installers, a film collection for a hotel TV.
The Slow Patch
The most careful test I know of is Gough Lui’s review of a 256GB unit from 2024. This is a different capacity, so the numbers won’t match, but the behaviour is worth knowing.
He saw sequential writes of about 94 to 99 MB/s with simple test data, and read peaks just over 400 MB/s. Then, at times, the drive dropped into a slow state of roughly 4 MB/s for a long period. It was not falling back to USB 2.0. A replug did not fix it, and it recovered only after a long while. He could not confirm the cause. A full random write and verify pass took 2 hours and 34 minutes, at about 55 MB/s round trip.
There was good news too. The drive stayed stable, never dropped out, passed a data integrity check with no errors, and proved to have its full capacity. He called it suitable for moving files, while still preferring NVMe SSDs in enclosures.
So a long copy might slow down badly partway through, and that does not mean your drive is broken. If a transfer seems stuck at a crawl, give it time before you pull it out. Only one unit went through this test, and I don’t know how the 128GB behaves here. Still, I would not plan a tight schedule around this drive.
Product image from the Amazon listing.
Related reading
Does It Get Hot?
Owners disagree, and I find that interesting. In an OzBargain thread, one 128GB owner said it gets “uncomfortably hot to the touch” after transfers longer than 2 or 3 minutes. Another commenter agreed you “could fry an egg on one,” without naming a size. But an owner with 64GB, 128GB and 256GB drives “never noticed it heats up.” And Gough Lui reported his unit “wasn’t warm at all,” and thought thermal throttling was unlikely in his case.
Metal bodies pass heat to your fingers, so a drive can feel hotter than a plastic one running at the same temperature. Samsung rates it for 0°C to 60°C in use. No owner I know of has measured the temperature of a 128GB unit during a long write, so I can’t give you a figure.
My practical advice is simple. If you do a long copy, let the drive cool before you pull it out and drop it in a pocket. Avoid plugging it into a tight spot behind a hot laptop or a TV.
Tough Where It Counts
The body is the best thing about this product. Samsung’s sheet claims resistance to water for 72 hours at 1 meter in salt water, to 1,500 g shock, to airport X-rays and to strong magnets. These are the maker’s own numbers, and I know of no independent proof. Hi-Tech called it perhaps the most solid flash drive it had handled in a couple of years, and warned that the hard metal could scratch other things in a bag. There is a loop for a key ring, and the drive is small at about 1.6 inches long.
The warranty is 5 years limited, which is long for a flash drive.
A drive built to survive water still doesn’t protect your only copy of anything. Reliability reports are mixed in the way that cheap flash usually is. In the same OzBargain thread, one 128GB buyer said theirs went bad after one day, and another had earlier drives “completely failing within a year,” though that comment does not name a capacity. Others reported the opposite: one has an older 128GB that has “been rock solid” for a few years, and the owner of several sizes had no issues. One person also noted that an older unit fit tightly in some USB sockets.
Those are a handful of comments, and they can’t tell you a failure rate. The right reading is the same for every USB stick: use it to carry files, not to keep them.
Product image from the Amazon listing.
Mac and Mixed Use
Samsung’s sheet lists Windows, Mac and Linux support, and USB 3.2 Gen 1, which is the same 5 Gbps as the older USB 3.1 label on the listing. The plug is USB-A, so a recent MacBook needs an adapter or a hub. If you want USB-C without a dongle, this is the wrong shape.
Related reading
Check the format before relying on it across systems. Gough Lui’s 256GB unit came formatted as exFAT, which both Macs and Windows PCs can read and write with no extra software. If yours arrives in another format, reformat it to exFAT for mixed use, and always eject it before you pull it out.
Avoid using it as a Time Machine disk, or as a place to run apps. Random write speed was poor in Gough Lui’s test, and StorageReview’s 4K figures were modest as well. For that kind of work, a portable SSD will be far better and costs more for good reason.
Tough and Quick to Read, Slow to Fill
I would buy the BAR Plus 128GB for a key ring, a car stereo, a TV, or for carrying files between computers a few gigabytes at a time. It is small and hard to damage, and it reads quickly.
Skip it if you move tens of gigabytes often. Skip it if a sudden slowdown would ruin your day, and skip it for backups you rely on. Buy the 256GB size if you want better writes, or a small SSD if you want them to stay fast.
If you know the write speed going in, the Samsung BAR Plus 128GB is a good everyday stick. This is an affiliate link. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
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