PC Magazine (Greece)
"The announcement of a 16GB stick, when 64GB sticks have been around for some time, cannot be considered sensational news. However, in the case of Throttle by OCZ things are different. Its design is a bit different, since Throttle is wider and relatively large, within proportion of course, but it remains convenient. But, what does this mini USB port doing at the back panel, and what is this "strange" plug underneath the cover? No, you are not mistaken, Throttle is not a USB flash drive, but an eSATA flash drive. The advantage is none other than a higher transfer and writing speed achieved by Throttle, when connected to an eSATA port, found on most PCs and notebooks nowadays. On the other hand, the USB port is provided for two reasons. The first has to do with compatibility, so that the stick can be used even when there is no eSATA port available, and the second concerns the supply of power in the case where the eSATA port is not self-powered."

Elite Bastards
“When using eSATA, we can see that the Throttle offers a consistently higher read speed on average against the USB flash drive. Burst speeds give us a similar story, with a 94.6MB rate for the Throttle over eSATA against just 30MB of our USB 2.0 drive. You can see the vast improvement in overall read and burst speeds from the move to a Serial ATA interface here however, even using exactly the same flash cells, which certainly goes some way to backing up OCZ's decision to release this series of drives. From our testing, there's little doubt that using eSATA to access flash storage offers some genuine performance improvements over doing the same via USB, and despite its large 16GB of storage in the case of our particular sample the Throttle easily outran the various 4GB drives we had at our disposal to compare it to. What OCZ has offered here is a solid effort with plenty of storage on show, and at a reasonable price point to boot. If you're dying to make use of the eSATA functionality of systems you own, or can guarantee access to powered eSATA ports wherever you go, then the Throttle is a fantastic and innovative solution which is definitely a worthwhile purchase."

ComputerWorld
"eSATA offers significant speed advantages over USB 2.0, which transfers data at a maximum rate of 480Mbit/sec. For now, however, you'll not find a faster data external data transfer medium for consumer computer products. I tested OCZ's 16GB Throttle flash drive, which comes in a sleek, black plastic case that measures 3 inches by 1 1/8 inches in size. OCZ has Kanguru beat on price, and on speed. If you're looking for an easy way to download those movies, photos or big files quickly and carry them in your shirt pocket, I highly recommend checking this drive out."

Xtreme CPU
"One thing to note early on is that the results in HD Tach and HD Tune read tests seem odd, I went back and verified that yes, in USB 2.0 mode, the Throttle is able to break the previous speed wall in both tests. This drive is certainly fast, portable and easy to use especially if you have a powered eSATA port. One reason is that few setups are able to boot from a USB drive, whereas it is more likely that your setup will be able to use a drive such as the Throttle as a boot drive for whichever OS you choose. I also feel that USB 3.0 flash drives will come out initially with a price premium, and until we can see actual read and write speeds of the drives, the OCZ Throttle is king of the ultra-portable hill in terms of data transfer speed."

Legit Reviews
"The removable storage benchmark showed the OCZ Throttle eSATA drive is insanely quick when compared to USB 2.0 flash drives. The OCZ Throttle eSATA drive has wicked fast read speeds that make nearly all Flash storage devices look slow. The 32GB OCZ Throttle eSATA drive is hands down the fastest thumb drive we have ever used! Basically, the OCZ Throttle was able to transfer over 30GB of files in roughly 15 minutes."

Allround PC (Germany)
“The availability of USB drives is like sand on the beach but now OCZ has introduced something completely new for the flash segment, the eSATA Throttle drive which can also be connected via USB. The build quality is very good. Looking at all different performance charts, OCZ definitely delivers. Read performance had an average of amazing 84MB/s with a max of 90,7MB/s. It’s also interesting to see that the load on the CPU is much lower with the eSATA drive compared to USB. With the innovative Throttle eSATA drives OCZ shows there are real good alternatives in the flash segement to USB drives, especially in terms of performance and the price is about on the same level."

Bjorn 3D
"I especially love the fact that the Throttle is also compatible with the standard USB ports so you will not be left out if your particular board may not yet have the eSATA port. Not to mention that the drive’s USB performance is the best we have seen among the drives we have tested. The fact that the drive will also be able to draw power from the USB port for those boards lack a BUS-powered eSATA port is quite ingenious and very handy in our opinion. Of course, if you can take the advantage of the eSATA port, you will not be disappointed by its performance. What is also great about the Throttle is that it is selling at comparable price to the USB based flash drives of similar storage space. I believe with the release of the Throttle, we may finally see eSATA takes off and slowly gaining popularities. Our hats off to OCZ for releasing such a product at the right time and provides such a great performance."

OverClock Intelligence Agency
“As you can see, the read performance on the OCZ Throttle is phenomenal. For some packet sizes, performance was even better than that listed on the specification sheet. This new drive's performance far exceeds any possible transfer speeds over USB. Here, the eSATA's abilities really shine through. An eSATA thumb drive like the OCZ Throttle has been long overdue. As an all around product, the Throttle is a pleasure to use. While it isn't the smallest drive on the market, it's definitely not too big to be less mobile than any other thumb-drive. Also, because the USB connection is by cable, there will be no sort of conflict with the Throttle blocking other ports. On the performance front, the read speeds from the Throttle are very impressive. At more than 93MB/s for maximum read speeds over eSATA, the Throttle provides a performance advantage that no USB drive can match. "

Pckoloji (Turkey)
“If are a fan of new technology, you will love the OCZ Throttle. The performance is simply awesome, we haven’t tested a USB drive which even came close to the level of the Throttle drive. This product is innovative and unique and more than a good alternative to regular USB drives as the price is also very competitive.”

Test Freaks
"There’s not much to be said about the eSATA Throttle, hands down it’s a winner in all tests with speeds that are well above the competition. The OCZ Throttle eSATA drive is the fastest I’ve ever tested while using it’s eSATA interface, it easily bests every other USB flash drive out there today."

Viper Lair
"Clearly, the OCZ Throttle eSATA Flash Drive is a speed demon. In USB mode, the drive performed on par with the OCZ Rally 2 Turbo, making it amongst the faster USB based drives we've tested. In eSATA mode, it just leaves everyone behind. In the small file tests, the Throttle was almost 100% faster than it's closest competitor. With this much speed, it's hard to find any shortcomings. For those of you who do not have eSATA ports, the Throttle still has value as it does have USB. In case any of you are wondering, yes, if you put data on the drive via eSATA, you can read it with the USB connection and vice versa."

Pro-Clockers
"The OCZ Throttle takes the newest and fastest port on the PC and makes it usable for small portable storage. There was no competition from the others as one would suspect. Hovering always around 90MB/s with CPU usage. It is a shame that more computers don't come with eSATA, or better yet powered eSATA ports as drives like the OCZ Throttle would totally replace the typical USB flash drive. I should not have been surprised how fast the drive was, considering the unit takes advantage of the faster SATA transfer rates. But for those that do not have an eSATA port and want to purchase the Throttle you will be happy to know that it also has a mini-USB connection as well.”

ChileHardware (Chile)
“The eSATA port on OCZ Throttle shows all its virtues, almost like a lightning bolt with an average reading of 86.1 MB/s performance increase by 160% over that USB interface. The OCZ Throttle is a clear demonstration of the technology we will start to see in our daily lives. Using the eSATA is very comfortable, prevents shutdown / turn on the computer each time you need to connect the OCZ Throttle, as it is a conventional pen drive that uses a USB port. One of the good qualities that the OCZ Throttle noted, was to be portable, since it is designed to work both as a USB interface for eSATA. While eSATA is only able to take your performance to the maximum, operating with the USB port is very gratifying for those who still do not have eSATA.”

Extreme Overclocking
“On average we got about 30MB/s write speed in eSATA mode. This was phenomenal, for those on the go transporting large files the Throttle would be great. Even in USB mode the OCZ Throttle was fast, coming in at 19.4MB/s. The OCZ Throttle Flash Drive offers great performance and speed utilizing eSATA. This is a great feature for those who need to copy data quickly from computers.”

i4U News
“With the eSATA interface, the Throttle is easily the fastest flash drive I have ever tested. Fast speeds are very important on a drive that can handle 32GB of data and the performance makes the Throttle a very viable backup option. If you want a high capacity flash drive with the fastest data transfer speeds you can get the OCZ Throttle is for you. This flash drive is blazing fast and offers dual interface options that will work with every laptop and desktop around.”

Slippery Brick
"The Throttle offers USB connectivity and has an eSATA connection as well offering roughly twice the performance of USB. If you have been looking for a flash drive that offers fast transfer speeds and a large capacity, the OCZ Throttle may be just what you need. The average read speed in USB mode was 28.4MB/sec. The average read speed in eSATA mode for the Throttle was 79.5 MB/sec, more than twice the speed of the drive in USB mode. You can see at a glance that the eSATA performance is much better than the USB performance. Overall, the Throttle is a great flash drive offering tons of storage and blazing fast speeds. In eSATA mode, the Throttle is by far the fastest flash drive I have ever tested."

ComputerBase (Germany)
“The performance of OCZs Throttle is something to show off! When connected via USB it already beats the flash drives tested by us before and competes with the ATV Turbo which makes use of SLC chips. When connected via eSATA it becomes really fast: depending on the benchmark the Throttle performed above the 90MB/s read and 30MB/s write."

PC Answers (United Kingdom)
“For transfer speeds this eSATA alternative is the fastest around.”

Computer Press (Russia)
“We can conclude that OCZ Throttle eSATA Flash Drive is one of the fastest flash-memory based drives today. Using fast eSATA interface allows OCZ Throttle eSATA Flash Drive to break the speed limit of traditional USB drives and get closer to speeds of modern hard drives. Moreover, considering that of OCZ Throttle eSATA Flash Drive is pretty small and affordable (32GB costs less than 4000 rubles), we would definitely recommend it to owners of laptops with eSATA port."

bcchardware
"For around the same price as a mid range USB drive of the same size I would recommend these drives as future-proof. I'd like to thank OCZ for sending along this little flash drive. It's probably the fastest thing I've plugged into a port on my computer."

Windows Vista Magazine (Spain)
“USB keys have turned into an indispensable product for the majority of users. The capacities have continued to increase however the issue is the limitation on performance. OCZ's Throttle eSATA solves this problem, with 90MB read and 30MB write advertised by the manufacturer, but in our test we managed to hit even higher speeds! The Throttle comes with a cable in case you do not have a powered eSATA port. Sufficient capacity, amazing performance at a great price!”

Hardware Info (Netherlands)
“There are products where you wonder 'why hasn’t anybody thought of this before?' – The OCZ Throttle is a product like that. OCZ promises read and write speeds of 90MB/s and 30MB/s, so the Throttle is not only a little bit faster, it’s a massive difference! Last but not least the Throttle is priced at the same level as high performing USB drives, if you are transferring a lot of data, the OCZ Throttle is a brilliant product!”

Virtual-Hideout
"eSata is that 'something else' OCZ has gone with for their “Throttle” thumb drive. [It] has a maximum transfer speed of 300MB/s, so it's a good future proof upgrade path from USB 2.0. You could say it's a simple evolutionary step for thumb drives, but I think it's a welcome one. As it stands, every new computer has sata ports, which are easy enough to convert into eSata.”

Ars Technica: USB Drive Roundup
"Like its relative the OCZ Rally2, the Throttle is a very fast drive on USB2. When it comes to performance, the OCZ Throttle is a completely different animal when connected to the eSATA port. Yeah, this thing is fast. Top read speeds hit between 85 and 90MB/sec. Very few drives (solid state or not) can even come close to saturating this sort of bandwidth. Best Drives for fastest read/write speeds goes to the OCZ Throttle. The OCZ Throttle also has a ridiculously fast eSATA mode."

OC3D
"When you've got a flash drive with the capacity of an articulated lorry and performance of Lamborghini it makes sense to plug it into an interface designed for such devices. This is exactly what OCZ have done with the Throttle, ditching the bandwidth limited USB2.0 interface in favor of the beast that is eSATA. This has resulted in a flash drive that not only outperforms some of the fastest USB drives on the market by a factor of at least two, but can also give many SATA hard disks a run for their money."

Driver Heaven
"When we enable the eSATA functionality of the Throttle the jump in performance is huge. The large file copy test is more than twice as fast with the small file copy being almost too quick to accurately record. With the Throttle drive OCZ have created a drive which has a reasonable level of geek coolness in both appearance and performance. Packed into its 18g frame is a decent amount of storage which is flexible due to the two interfaces and performance through both cannot be faulted."

PC Tuner (Italy)
“OCZ Throttle gets you good data storage capacity with external disk performance, small footprint and weight and the dual convenience of a very flexible device. Featuring excellent performance even in writing, the Throttle does around 30 MB / s on average, a very good overall. Also, the access time is reduced further to just 0.2 ms and the percentage of occupancy of the CPU has returned to normal levels, with a value of 2.0%."

Effizienz Gurus (Germany): USB Drive Round-Up
“And here comes the performance king! OCZ does not just ‘throttle’ all opponents , it crashes them on both eSATA and USB modes. OCZ, we congratulate you on this great achievement. A worthy recipient of the Good Choice Award.”

Chip (Germany)
“Extremely fast, with the additional USB port for a compatibility extra and only slightly more expensive than "normal" USB memory sticks. OCZ delivers with a 32GB Throttle eSATA - an inexpensive and speedy eSATA memory stick. 91.5 MB/s is still triple the transfer rate of USB sticks. When testing the writing speeds in our test lab, the OCZ stick is even twice as fast as that of DeLOCK: 52.1 MB/s. Together with the good price of around 85 euro for 32GB, the OCZ Throttle is one of the most attractive eSATA memory sticks on the market.”

Muy Computer (Spain)
“OCZ has managed to innovate in a somewhat saturated market of USB keys. Moreover, it opens the door to a niche little exploited yet, where memory searches for external high capacity, performance and ease of use. The velocities obtained with eSATA are substantially higher than those obtained with USB 2.0. It’s not even ridiculous to think about running an operating system from this type of device halfway between a USB key and an SSD hard drive.”

Hispazone (Spain)
“For me the Throttle is the most versatile flash drive on the market and is also remarkably fast. This will satisfy users looking for a piece of hardware to acquire high capacity and maximize performance. For less than € 100 you have a flash drive of 32GB with the option of using it for much more than simple data storage, so for the same price as any other USB drive to get more speed and 32GB a world of possibilities open for use .  It's like having a SSD in a format where we can store and install what they want from us. This unit is a more complete USB drive and is more advanced, worthy of our most important prize. 10 to OCZ.”

Smart Computing
"As an ordinary USB drive, the wide-body Throttle screams. Use it as an eSATA (external Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) drive, however, and its speed practically triples. The glossy black plastic Throttle doesn’t have a typical male USB connector. Instead, it has a female mini-USB port and comes with a 2-foot extension cable. Plug the cable into a PC’s USB port to use the Throttle as a USB drive in virtually any computer. For top speed in a relative handful of systems, plug in the eSATA connector instead. The upside is tremendous speed from computers equipped with eSATA: up to 85.7MBps reading and 12.5MBps writing."