As we told you about when the news reached us that Microsoft was going to update the Xbox 360 for mass storage abilities up to 16GB, Microsoft also announced a partnership with SanDisk to release a couple of USB flash drives that were Xbox 360-branded and certified as compatible with the Xbox 360.

The new drive, as we already have written about, is available in both 8GB and 16GB sizes. The drive housing itself does feature the Xbox 360 logo, but for all intents and purposes it is your basic SanDisk USB flash drive.

The biggest difference, however, might be the price. The 8GB drive will set you back $34.99, while the 16GB drive will cost you $69.99. Of course, this isn’t cheap, but you do get a code that is included that will give you an extra month of Xbox Live Gold, which does offset the high price somewhat.

Early testing indicates that the drive performance is better than average, so it should outperform your cheap, low-budget flash drive without too much trouble. Since the USB mass storage support is capped at 16GB (or about 14GB once the drive is formatted), we can’t say too much one way or the other. Price is higher compared to other drives, performance appears to be about average, one month of free Xbox Live Gold is nice, but it is just difficult to find a way to recommend the drive when there are faster performing lower-priced solutions available.