Transcend SSD370 (128GB, 256GB & 512GB) Review
by Kristian Vättö on January 27, 2015 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
- SSDs
- Transcend
- Silicon Motion
- SM2246EN
Final Words
From the performance perspective, the SSD370 is a very competitive value drive. It doesn't top the charts, but it provides a very good balance of consistency and peak performance. In most workloads, particularly our real-world testing, the SSD370 performs better than the MX100 and Ultra II, which have been my go-to value drives. Under very intensive workloads, the ARC 100 is slightly faster thanks to its great consistency, but most people who are looking for value drives won't have such harsh usage anyway.
The lack of DIPM support and the high slumber power consumption is a bit disappointing, though. Given how similar modern SSDs are in terms of performance, the power consumption really matters because additional battery life is easier to notice and more concrete than a few percent increase in performance. Obviously that doesn't apply to desktop users, but the majority of PCs are laptops now, so it just seems illogical to disable DIPM. Hopefully that's something Transcend can enable through a firmware update.
| NewEgg Price Comparison (1/23/2015) | ||||
| 120/128GB | 240/250/256GB | 480/500/512GB | 960GB/1TB | |
| Transcend SSD370 | $73 | $111 | $190 | $404 |
| Transcend SSD340 | $74 | $105 | - | - |
| Samsung SSD 850 EVO | $86 | $140 | $235 | $476 |
| Samsung SSD 850 Pro | $118 | $170 | $367 | $630 |
| SanDisk Extreme Pro | - | $150 | $260 | $508 |
| SanDisk Ultra II | $70 | $110 | $215 | $405 |
| Crucial MX100 | $70 | $109 | $214 | - |
| Plextor M6S | $76 | $130 | $270 | - |
| Intel SSD 730 | - | $160 | $318 | - |
| Intel SSD 530 | $80 | $128 | $240 | - |
| OCZ ARC 100 | $70 | $99 | $190 | - |
The pricing of the SSD370 is extremely competitive. It's practically undercutting the MX100 and Ultra II, which makes it one of the cheapest value drives on the market, and the SSD370 is also listed at even lower prices on Amazon Prime right now. Only the ARC 100 is cheaper, but on the other hand it also lacks support for low power states and doesn't come in 1TB capacity either.
I don't hand out the "Recommended by AnandTech" award very often, but I think it's justified in this case. It's not an overstatement to say that the SSD370 is overall the highest performing value drive and on top of that the pricing is very alluring. I would still, however, recommend the MX100 and Ultra II for users that are concerned about battery life because of SSD370's high idle power consumption. If Transcend SSD370 was able to fix that through a firmware update, it would be safe to say that the SSD370 would be the best value SSD on the market.
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Hulk - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
Perhaps I missed it but no mention/testing of endurance? All I see are manufacturer quoted numbers in the table.DanNeely - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
Barring catastrophic failures, endurance testing a drive to destruction takes many months. Tech Report started torturing a set of 256GB drives in late 2013; as of last month 2 of the 6 drives were still running.http://techreport.com/review/27436/the-ssd-enduran...
Hulk - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
I guess you don't read Anandtech much. Generally they run down the drive enough to move the counter down a few percent, then make a good estimate of endurance based on those numbers. I think it's very interesting and pretty much only Anandtech does it. Or used to do it.extide - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
Maybe it's you that doesn't read AT that much ;) (Haha, I had to)They typically will only do that when they are testing drives with a new type of NAND that we haven't seen yet before, or testing some weird scenario, or something like that. Micron 20nm NAND is a well known entity at this point, and even though they are using custom firmware on this controller, it's performance and behavior seems very similar to the stock SMI firmware -- so basically there is nothing remarkable here. I am sure the endurance will be similar to most other drives with this type of NAND.
Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
Right on the spot. I only do endurance testing with new NAND generations that we haven't seen before to figure out the P/E cycle rating. It takes days, possibly weeks, so there is no point in testing that with every drive. After all, the manufacturers' ratings still matter because once those are reached the warranty will be voided anyway, so my endurance tests aim to tell more about the NAND than the drive itself.Hulk - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
Okay makes sense.I can admit when I'm wrong.
Hulk - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
But wait. Does it take days or weeks to run down the counter 1 or 2 percent? That's all you need to get an estimate on actual endurance right?And isn't there variation in the NAND that each manufacturer buys for each line of drives? I'm talking about the binning and how endurance can vary for the same process.
Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
The problem is finding the exact spot where the counter changes by 1 percent, so it usually takes at least a few percent worth of cycling to find that. Generally it takes a couple of days for client drives, but even then that time is away from testing other drives.You are correct that not every die is equal, but the P/E cycle rating is usually conservative to guarantee that all SSD-grade dies comply that spec. With binning and parameter trimming it's possible to get much more out of the dies though.
Hulk - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
Wow. Thanks for the specific reply.Souka - Wednesday, January 28, 2015 - link
Just thought to share:I've fried 3 brand new SSDs in my torrent box over the past year. Granted two were 64GB, one 120GB, and they were pretty meh to begin with performance wise.
I knew the SSD wouldn't last, but didn't expect it to fail that quickly. Currently have an OLD 64GB Intel SLC (X25 I think) in for past few months...no issue yet.