I bought a 16GB version of this drive 2 years ago for more than I bought the 64GB version a week ago. The 16GB version, I milled down and glued inside a custom built LEGO Captain Jack Sparrow figurine. Worked and looked splendid. This 64GB I plugged into the back of my Wii U. It works great too.
Nintendo discourages the use of flash drives as expansions to the Wii U's memory. They recommend getting a hard drive, but point out that you must power your hard drive separately, as the USB 2.0 port on the Wii U will not consistently provide enough power to spin the hard drive. Firstly, I don't like mechanical hard drives. They are relatively fragile and bulky. And they draw much more power and give off much more heat than any other modern type of storage device. And they are the slowest of the modern storage banks. Plus, I do not want another box and two more cables (one connection, one power) cluttering up my entertainment center. I considered getting a 156GB Samsung Solid State Drive (SSD), but at about $130, they are still a little too pricey for me to be enthusiastic about. They are incredibly fast and very efficient, drawing little power and giving off little heat. And with no moving parts, they are much harder to damage. And they are about the size of 3 stacked credit cards. But getting a SSD, besides being expensive, would also add one connection/power cable, which I still don't really care for, even if my vanity would have allowed me to show off a SSD in my entertainment center. I then learned that flash drives are now made in sizes up to 128GB, and they are very nearly the same thing. So I began the hunt for a flash drive.
In reading reviews on some of the cheapest drives, both here on Amazon and on other forums, I learned that not all flash drives work with the Wii U. Flash drive salesmen tell you the capacity of the drive, but rarely the speed of the drive. It became apparent that some cheap drives would not work, that games saved to said flash drives would stutter and occasionally crash, and that all saved progress in a game could be lost. So I was very careful to not be too cheap when I bought this drive. Hearing of a success story with a SanDisk flash drive, I decided to buy one myself.
The SanDisk Ultra Fit is perfect. It is USB 3.0 (not to be confused with the 2.0 Cruzer Fit) The Wii U only has USB 2.0 ports, so right off the bat, this flash drive is designed to run faster than the Wii U is meant to receive data from any external memory bank. It is tiny, barely sticking out of the back of my Wii U, and completely unnoticeable to anyone not looking for it.. It is also small enough that I do not have to worry about it being bumped and bent or broken if I decide to move the system, like to take it on vacation. It draws almost no power, and barely heats up. And though it is only 64GB, I can fit two side by side and quadruple the Wii U's internal memory.
I got mine on sale for $27, but even at full price, $33, this is a no brainer. If you want a quality flash drive, with great speed and capacity, and like the small, almost-non-existent-when-inserted profile, this is a perfect flash drive for you. And if you are looking to expand your Wii U's memory, get it! Get two if you need more space. Unless you download every game, I doubt you will need more space, and even then you will have to buy a heck of a lot of games. I transferred files for "The Art of Balance" and "Bayonetta 2" over to the flash drive, and they still played flawlessly. I do not expect that to change, and could only be happier if SanDisk made a 128GB version of this tiny beast of a flash drive.
| Connectivity Technology | USB |
|---|---|
| Color | Black |
| Flash Memory Type | USB |
| RAM | 16 GB |
