I read this with only one question in mind: does it beat the 850 Evo? Save for a few ticks in power usage, apparently not. The Evo is perpetually on sale. I've yet to see a compelling reason to opt for anything else on a desktop.
The CS1311 gets marked down from time to time; I picked up my 480GB one for $100 while the Evo 850 500GB usually doesn't get marked down below $130 (and it was $150 everywhere when I picked up the CS1311). It's plenty fast for real world use, especially as a drop-in replacement for an HDD. I think there's a place for drives like it, although that applies less to the CS2211.
For the performance and value you're getting with the EVO, $30 is well worth the extra, and hardly an amount worth saving going for the CS1311, or any other TLC drives at that. In the matter of fact, lots of the current consumer MLC drives don't compare to the value, performance, or in some cases, the endurance and features you're getting with the EVO.
I agree from most "prosumers" which are frequent to read this article, but for the mainstream user, I don't think its worth it (spending the $30+). Any SSD is better than a HDD, but some garbage bargain bin SSDs aren't worth the cheap price (this being the first exception). I know most people (including myself) think the same thing alexdi posted when reading this....is this going to beat the evo? It doesn't, but at the same time it's not far off from it, and $30 bucks can cause it to break a price plane for some mid range users.
Each person has there own utility curve or price performance idea, and for me, this is the first drive since the 840 EVO was released in which I would say it's not worth the x dollars to just get the evo!
Having a quality, reliable drive is not reason enough for you? If you want to buy a drive that has a much shorter life span, go for it. But Anybody that cares about data, is not going to by a TLC drive over a MLC drive.
You're talking in broad strokes about a bunch of different things in the same breath. Life span and reliability aren't necessarily the same thing, unless you need drives to be reliable for 15yrs...
15yrs ago I was wondering if I'd ever fill my 75GB Deathstar, I'm not sure I'd even keep a drive 5+ years. My 2x 850 EVO have been nothing but reliable since I bought them last year.
Same here. the M.2 850 EVO 500GB is my go to SSD right now. They are in all my computers either in M.2 slots or M.2-> SATA sleds. The performance and reliability is hard to beat. I only buy M.2 SSDs now for future compatibility because they last so long I know they'll outlive the computers they inhabit right now. When the 1TB version drops to ~$150 I'll grab some more...
I'm sitting on 2x 1TB, bought at like $310 & $330 IIRC, seen them for $260 lately... Waiting for the 2TB to drop lower and I might add one of those. :D
It has been like that ever since they unleashed V-NAND drives. Despite being on top, I think they are selling them competitively to remove or not allow smaller players to enter.
At least in Europe Samsung has priced itself out of the game completely. I've yet to see EVO ever even near the top of the GB per euro/£ list when I've been searching for drives. Usually Crucial seems to take to top stop and I've yet to see a reason buy anything else.
Like now as I write I see 480GB BX200 being available for 97€ taxes included in amazon.de, cheapest 500GB EVO is 141€, so straight away +45% or something like that. I've yet to see it ever being even remotely competitive with sandisks or corsairs in Europe.
It still seems to sell well though being often in the top lists of many retailers.
Last i checked US prices for Samsung EVO were also very high. I dont know what other commenters are talking about. Are they ignorant or Samsung agents?
Thanks for the review. It's good to see SSD prices falling thanks to TLC and a standardized, inexpensive controller. I've been happy with the added capacity at a lower price point thanks to TLC flash. TLC performance behind budget controllers seems good enough now to make MLC SSDs a poor choice in a lot of desktop and laptop usage scenarios.
I would love to see the SSD price fall fir any reason but planar TLC :( The performance of planar TLC is not that big of an issue, but the reduced lifetime is.
Is the reduced lifetime really that extreme? As far as I've seen it's still far better than anything you would get out of a conventional HDD. Adding in better general performance and it seems like less intensive applications (like a game or media storage drive) would still be perfectly acceptable for TLC
You get 3 years warranty at most (two years less than MLC/V-NAND TLC) and something like 1000 p/e cycles. Good enough for many things (music, videos), but not if you're writing a lot (e.g. a system drive or a game drive). And while TLC itself is not so bad (it's hardly worth it imho, because it's not much cheaper), if the trend continues we'll have some pretty crappy drives in our hands soon.
How is that not good enough? That's 3 years if you rewrite the ENTIRE drive EVERY DAY. Let's pick a long 9 year planned lifetime for a drive as you would probably want to upgrade by then for non-failure reasons. That means you could write 1/3 of the drive's capacity every day for those nine days. For a 256GB drive (somewhat on the small end now) that's 85GB every day. Or installing 2-3 AAA games every day!
Well, on a modern OS you no longer control the amount of data being written. Automatic updates, indexing, metadata, restore points... the OS will write those whenever it wants to. If planar TLC was half the cost of MLC or V-NAND TLC, I may consider it. But since it's within 10-20%, I'd rather get the better drive.
I have a modern OS on my laptop and have quite a bit of control over what does or doesn't get written to storage. For instance, there are no restore points, indexing is mine to manage as I see fit. I can pick when and what I want to update, and I haven't allocated a partition to swap (thank you Linux). You just have to exercise a bit of selectivity about which modern OS you decide to install.
In my experience, the average mechanical hard drive has a life of about 2 years. I see many of them fail before then, and most of the drives these that last over 5 years are already 8+ years old.
I recently bought one of Seagate's 8TB archival drives and it started making some clicking noises right out of the box. It hasn't given me any problems yet, but it is a bit disconcerting to hear a click every couple minutes. Hard drives just don't last very long anymore, while my SSDs have been rock solid with everyday use. I would not install my operating system on a mechanical drive ever again. No reason to do so.
i put windows XP on this 1311, and it's the fastest I've ever seen XP do anything, startup, tasks, and installing software and launching programs, faster than high end workstation systems on HDD's, since it's debut in 2001... lol and yes, the XP OS is extremely stable because the 1311 takes care of garbage collection in the background. burn tested it for several hours and days on end, it's perfect...
PC industry: "Hey, let's continue to make gaudy looking hardware to appeal to the xtremez hardcorez teenage gamerz crowd instead of adult gamers with actual disposable income."
yours idea is really good and innovative , these resources are really awesome thanks for sharing those information and i got more in formation about this concept.
I have to agree that at the mid/low range, currently the Samsung 850 Evo seems like the best buy in terms of performance and endurance. Still I wonder why so many manufacturers are jumping in and piling up with budget SSDs.
They want a piece of the pie. They figure that with their brand on a popular item, they will be able to reap some profit. Over the years, my best selling SSD's have been Intel and Samsung. Lately, I've been impressed with SanDisk and have included them to my lineup.
you guys are so two-faced, the #1 complaint of SSD is too expensive, so a new lower cost SSD appears and your answers are, i.e. "not worth it...pay a little more for better" LOL bi-polar much?
one more thing...if your looking for 3 or SSD's, the extra $$ adds up. e.g. a desktop, laptop. PS4...maybe a 2 year old laptop. Bingo! four already... [talking real world]
We’ve updated our terms. By continuing to use the site and/or by logging into your account, you agree to the Site’s updated Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
43 Comments
Back to Article
alexdi - Friday, April 15, 2016 - link
I read this with only one question in mind: does it beat the 850 Evo? Save for a few ticks in power usage, apparently not. The Evo is perpetually on sale. I've yet to see a compelling reason to opt for anything else on a desktop.ingwe - Friday, April 15, 2016 - link
Completely agree. I am not tied to it, but I don't see any reason to recommend pretty much anything else.fierywater - Friday, April 15, 2016 - link
The CS1311 gets marked down from time to time; I picked up my 480GB one for $100 while the Evo 850 500GB usually doesn't get marked down below $130 (and it was $150 everywhere when I picked up the CS1311). It's plenty fast for real world use, especially as a drop-in replacement for an HDD. I think there's a place for drives like it, although that applies less to the CS2211.lilmoe - Friday, April 15, 2016 - link
For the performance and value you're getting with the EVO, $30 is well worth the extra, and hardly an amount worth saving going for the CS1311, or any other TLC drives at that. In the matter of fact, lots of the current consumer MLC drives don't compare to the value, performance, or in some cases, the endurance and features you're getting with the EVO.ATC9001 - Monday, April 18, 2016 - link
I agree from most "prosumers" which are frequent to read this article, but for the mainstream user, I don't think its worth it (spending the $30+). Any SSD is better than a HDD, but some garbage bargain bin SSDs aren't worth the cheap price (this being the first exception). I know most people (including myself) think the same thing alexdi posted when reading this....is this going to beat the evo? It doesn't, but at the same time it's not far off from it, and $30 bucks can cause it to break a price plane for some mid range users.Each person has there own utility curve or price performance idea, and for me, this is the first drive since the 840 EVO was released in which I would say it's not worth the x dollars to just get the evo!
Stuka87 - Friday, April 15, 2016 - link
Having a quality, reliable drive is not reason enough for you? If you want to buy a drive that has a much shorter life span, go for it. But Anybody that cares about data, is not going to by a TLC drive over a MLC drive.lilmoe - Friday, April 15, 2016 - link
FYI, TLC VNAND has better endurance than most 15nm MLC drives...Impulses - Friday, April 15, 2016 - link
Define much shorter...You're talking in broad strokes about a bunch of different things in the same breath. Life span and reliability aren't necessarily the same thing, unless you need drives to be reliable for 15yrs...
15yrs ago I was wondering if I'd ever fill my 75GB Deathstar, I'm not sure I'd even keep a drive 5+ years. My 2x 850 EVO have been nothing but reliable since I bought them last year.
DanoSpumoni - Friday, April 15, 2016 - link
Same here. the M.2 850 EVO 500GB is my go to SSD right now. They are in all my computers either in M.2 slots or M.2-> SATA sleds. The performance and reliability is hard to beat. I only buy M.2 SSDs now for future compatibility because they last so long I know they'll outlive the computers they inhabit right now. When the 1TB version drops to ~$150 I'll grab some more...Impulses - Friday, April 15, 2016 - link
I'm sitting on 2x 1TB, bought at like $310 & $330 IIRC, seen them for $260 lately... Waiting for the 2TB to drop lower and I might add one of those. :DDanoSpumoni - Saturday, April 16, 2016 - link
When 2TB SSDs drop below $200 then i'll bite... from the current trend it looks like thats only a couple years away maybe lesszodiacfml - Friday, April 15, 2016 - link
It has been like that ever since they unleashed V-NAND drives. Despite being on top, I think they are selling them competitively to remove or not allow smaller players to enter.zepi - Friday, April 15, 2016 - link
At least in Europe Samsung has priced itself out of the game completely. I've yet to see EVO ever even near the top of the GB per euro/£ list when I've been searching for drives. Usually Crucial seems to take to top stop and I've yet to see a reason buy anything else.Like now as I write I see 480GB BX200 being available for 97€ taxes included in amazon.de, cheapest 500GB EVO is 141€, so straight away +45% or something like that. I've yet to see it ever being even remotely competitive with sandisks or corsairs in Europe.
It still seems to sell well though being often in the top lists of many retailers.
DeepLake - Friday, April 15, 2016 - link
Last i checked US prices for Samsung EVO were also very high. I dont know what other commenters are talking about. Are they ignorant or Samsung agents?BrokenCrayons - Friday, April 15, 2016 - link
Thanks for the review. It's good to see SSD prices falling thanks to TLC and a standardized, inexpensive controller. I've been happy with the added capacity at a lower price point thanks to TLC flash. TLC performance behind budget controllers seems good enough now to make MLC SSDs a poor choice in a lot of desktop and laptop usage scenarios.haukionkannel - Friday, April 15, 2016 - link
So true. They Are slover, but the prises are good.hansmuff - Friday, April 15, 2016 - link
They make excellent game drives. With games coming in at 50GB at times, a 480 or 960GB TLC drive with so-so speeds is perfectly acceptable.bug77 - Friday, April 15, 2016 - link
I would love to see the SSD price fall fir any reason but planar TLC :(The performance of planar TLC is not that big of an issue, but the reduced lifetime is.
LostWander - Friday, April 15, 2016 - link
Is the reduced lifetime really that extreme? As far as I've seen it's still far better than anything you would get out of a conventional HDD. Adding in better general performance and it seems like less intensive applications (like a game or media storage drive) would still be perfectly acceptable for TLCbug77 - Friday, April 15, 2016 - link
You get 3 years warranty at most (two years less than MLC/V-NAND TLC) and something like 1000 p/e cycles. Good enough for many things (music, videos), but not if you're writing a lot (e.g. a system drive or a game drive).And while TLC itself is not so bad (it's hardly worth it imho, because it's not much cheaper), if the trend continues we'll have some pretty crappy drives in our hands soon.
futrtrubl - Saturday, April 16, 2016 - link
How is that not good enough? That's 3 years if you rewrite the ENTIRE drive EVERY DAY.Let's pick a long 9 year planned lifetime for a drive as you would probably want to upgrade by then for non-failure reasons. That means you could write 1/3 of the drive's capacity every day for those nine days. For a 256GB drive (somewhat on the small end now) that's 85GB every day. Or installing 2-3 AAA games every day!
bug77 - Sunday, April 17, 2016 - link
Well, on a modern OS you no longer control the amount of data being written. Automatic updates, indexing, metadata, restore points... the OS will write those whenever it wants to.If planar TLC was half the cost of MLC or V-NAND TLC, I may consider it. But since it's within 10-20%, I'd rather get the better drive.
doggface - Tuesday, April 19, 2016 - link
The average laptop user writes 10-20gb a day. Even if you were double average you would still be safe as houses.BrokenCrayons - Thursday, April 21, 2016 - link
I have a modern OS on my laptop and have quite a bit of control over what does or doesn't get written to storage. For instance, there are no restore points, indexing is mine to manage as I see fit. I can pick when and what I want to update, and I haven't allocated a partition to swap (thank you Linux). You just have to exercise a bit of selectivity about which modern OS you decide to install.rarson - Monday, April 18, 2016 - link
In my experience, the average mechanical hard drive has a life of about 2 years. I see many of them fail before then, and most of the drives these that last over 5 years are already 8+ years old.I recently bought one of Seagate's 8TB archival drives and it started making some clicking noises right out of the box. It hasn't given me any problems yet, but it is a bit disconcerting to hear a click every couple minutes. Hard drives just don't last very long anymore, while my SSDs have been rock solid with everyday use. I would not install my operating system on a mechanical drive ever again. No reason to do so.
fire400 - Monday, May 23, 2016 - link
i put windows XP on this 1311, and it's the fastest I've ever seen XP do anything, startup, tasks, and installing software and launching programs, faster than high end workstation systems on HDD's, since it's debut in 2001... loland yes, the XP OS is extremely stable because the 1311 takes care of garbage collection in the background.
burn tested it for several hours and days on end, it's perfect...
LB-ID - Friday, April 15, 2016 - link
I can't imagine buying any PNY products in any event, but even more so given that the Samsung EVO is so much more bang and reliability for your buck.DigitalFreak - Friday, April 15, 2016 - link
Every PNY device I've had, whether SD cards or video cards, has died prematurely. Absolute garbage.The_Assimilator - Friday, April 15, 2016 - link
That's what the "XLR8" part stands for!TheinsanegamerN - Wednesday, April 20, 2016 - link
My pny 770s are going strong 2.5 years later. Also some of the coolest running 770s I've seenAscaris - Friday, April 29, 2016 - link
My PNY 760 is still going strong too. No plans to replace it at present, as it still does what I need.StrangerGuy - Friday, April 15, 2016 - link
I know this is an SSD, but...PC industry: "Hey, let's continue to make gaudy looking hardware to appeal to the xtremez hardcorez teenage gamerz crowd instead of adult gamers with actual disposable income."
deeksha - Saturday, April 16, 2016 - link
yours idea is really good and innovative , these resources are really awesome thanks for sharing those information and i got more in formation about this concept.
watzupken - Saturday, April 16, 2016 - link
I have to agree that at the mid/low range, currently the Samsung 850 Evo seems like the best buy in terms of performance and endurance. Still I wonder why so many manufacturers are jumping in and piling up with budget SSDs.hlmcompany - Tuesday, April 19, 2016 - link
They want a piece of the pie. They figure that with their brand on a popular item, they will be able to reap some profit. Over the years, my best selling SSD's have been Intel and Samsung. Lately, I've been impressed with SanDisk and have included them to my lineup.hlmcompany - Monday, April 18, 2016 - link
The SanDisk X400 512GB SATA SSD at $122.00 from Amazon USA is also a good option.slowdemon21 - Thursday, April 28, 2016 - link
you guys are so two-faced, the #1 complaint of SSD is too expensive, so a new lower cost SSD appears and your answers are, i.e. "not worth it...pay a little more for better" LOL bi-polar much?Ascaris - Friday, April 29, 2016 - link
Do you know for sure it's the same people making those comments? It's not hard to imagine that one site could have readers of both types commenting.slowdemon21 - Thursday, April 28, 2016 - link
one more thing...if your looking for 3 or SSD's, the extra $$ adds up. e.g. a desktop, laptop. PS4...maybe a 2 year old laptop. Bingo! four already... [talking real world]slowdemon21 - Thursday, April 28, 2016 - link
OCZ TRION 150 BENCHED IN THE MIDDLE OF MOST OF THESE TEST, there's the Winner