You can buy a 5pack of PNY 32gb sticks for 30 dollars rn and as low as 15 dollars for 5pack of crap brands. A 32gb stick from anyone is under 10 dollars currently.
What even is this and why is it so expensive?
smallbitSpeed. The transfer rates on those cheap drives is abyssal. Those drives would take 2 hours to transfer the full 32GB capacity to the drive. This drive would take 3-5 minutes at the same capacity.
smallbitThe interface honestly doesn't matter, the controller on it does though. If the USB 3.1 gen2 Interface was fully saturated you would be able to transfer at speeds near 1250MBps.
The Sandisk Ultra write speed you linked averages near 40MBps. The Samsung is a little over 60MBps in the reviews I found. The product here is rated for 180MBps.
As I said, you are paying for the transfer speed.
smallbitThe price can also reflect the quality of nand and other materials used in the device. Flash drives generally get the junk that's left after everything else. Like the turkey bones at Thanksgiving. They may not have any meat on them, but they can still make soup broth. Then again, they may not have better nand. That question can only be answered by the maker.
smallbitFrom my experience, PNY is a crap brand. Got a couple to use on a Mac. Firmware bug inside them turned them into bricks... the only possible fix was a windows app they released to update the firmware. Sucks big time, never again.