Comments Locked

54 Comments

Back to Article

  • maecenas - Tuesday, September 16, 2014 - link

    Interesting stuff, good to see that competition is picking up in this market. I think it will be a significant threshold moment when we see the 240gb SSDs drop below $100.
  • NeatOman - Tuesday, September 16, 2014 - link

    I just saw an OCZ Vertex 460 240GB drive go for $104 the other day on newegg, and of course there sold out. Thats Nucking Futs, since i bought a 120GB 840 pro last year for $140 and the speed looks to be about the same, possibly faster in some ways on the OCZ
  • D. Lister - Sunday, October 12, 2014 - link

    But then, it is OCZ, and many people who know their tech history, wouldn't take an OCZ SSD for free (regardless of whether they are right or wrong in doing so).
  • simonrichter - Friday, October 3, 2014 - link

    I agree, really interesting to see and I'm looking forward to see what the future holds for SSDs. /Simon from http://www.consumertop.com/best-computer-storage-g...
  • CamdogXIII - Tuesday, September 16, 2014 - link

    I bought my first SSD back in 08. 16GB for 80$ Second SSD was 32GB for 100$. Third SSD was 64GB for 100$. Just bought a 256GB 840 Pro for 160$. We have come a long way.
  • PICman - Tuesday, September 16, 2014 - link

    Having an SLC cache is clever. I also like the low power consumption, reasonable performance, and especially the low price. I've had bad luck with the reliability of Samsung products, so it's great that they are getting some competition.
  • Wixman666 - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link

    I've had nothing but stellar performance from Samsung SSDs. I have dozens of them out in the field, and not one single failure. Sandisk is OK as well... OCZ might end up OK since Toshiba owns them now.
  • Essence_of_War - Tuesday, September 16, 2014 - link

    I feel like with every new ssd review I read, I grow to appreciate the fantastic value that the MX100 represents even more.
  • frontlinegeek - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link

    Totally agree. We just outfitted our development PCs at work with MX100 256 GB drives and they are utterly fantastic for price/performance. I cannot at all get over how big an impact an SSD at work makes. FAR more than at home I can say. At least for average home use.

    We run multiple Visual Studio sessions and Oracle SQL Developer along with browsers and other misc apps so the impact has been just terrific.
  • fanofanand - Thursday, May 12, 2016 - link

    I know this article is old, but I was researching SSD's and as I trust Anandtech over any other tech site, I came here for the truth. The sad reality is, the MX100 has been overly praised, and is now priced (on Amazon) $72 more than the Sandisk Ultra II at same/similar (512 vs 480) capacity. The MX100 isn't Ultra 2 good......
  • Death666Angel - Saturday, September 17, 2016 - link

    That's mostly because the MX100 has been outdated for a while. Crucial/Micron has the MX200 and now MX300 and even a BX100. As long as the MX100 had been in play, it was a great value. But the MX200 and BX100 didn't replace it adequately. I hope the 300 does better.
  • danjw - Tuesday, September 16, 2014 - link

    So, basically Sandisk and Micron are both a generation behind Samsung in performance and Micron is a generation behind in features as well. With the 850 Pro offering a 10 year warranty and winning hands down on performance, Sandisk and Micron can for the scraps of the value market.

    That said, I do hope others, including Toshiba, can get their act together and actually compete with Samsung. I just don't see it happening quite yet.
  • Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, September 16, 2014 - link

    SanDisk offers a 10-year warranty on the Extreme Pro as well and it is close to the 850 Pro in performance while being generally cheaper, so I wouldn't say Samsung is a generation ahead. Micron is a different story, but their focus has never been on the high performance niche.

    Toshiba's SSD business is more or less OEM only and there are no signs of that being about to change. Their branded side is very small and there is no marketing push behind it, so while Toshiba will remain strong in the OEM side I don't see them having any major role in the retail business.
  • ZeDestructor - Tuesday, September 16, 2014 - link

    Is there any chance you could get a Crucial/Micron M550DC in for review? From a review I read a while back at storagereviews.com, it seemed like a pretty fast drive, up there with the intel DC S3x00 dsrives.
  • Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link

    We reviewed the M500DC when it was launched:

    http://www.anandtech.com/show/7947/micron-m500-dc-...
  • Wixman666 - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link

    I believe he meand that they are a generation behind as far as TLC SSDs go. Since Toshiba bought OCZ, they'll use that brand to push their retail business.
  • MrSpadge - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link

    That is a very short-sighted view. The 850 Pro is almost twice as expensive as these value drives. If the performance of those value drives is enough (and for many people it will be) than paying twice as much for no real-world benefit is a pretty bad proposition.

    Sure, 10 years of warrenty sound nice.. but is a small 850 Pro still worth anything in 5+ years? And a shorter warrenty doesn't mean the other drives are guaranteed to fail shortly after that either.
  • hojnikb - Tuesday, September 16, 2014 - link

    Wow, i never though nand dies are actually larger than 128Gbit. I always figered that spare area, bad blocks and ECC stuff comes from GB to GiB conversion (which works out to be ~7%).

    So does real die capacity differ with other manufacturers aswell ?
  • hojnikb - Tuesday, September 16, 2014 - link

    I wonder if ULTRA II will exhibit the same issues with reading cold files as EVO. It seems that both 840 and EVO are losing on read performance with old files. And since this seems to be limited to TLC drives there might just be a slight chance, that ultra ii could potentially be affected aswell ?
    Any comments on that ?
  • iLovefloss - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link

    I thought it was confirmed that issue was limited to the 840 EVO only with the original 840 and the 840 Pro showing no signs of issues. Honestly, it seems more like a controller issue than NAND issue.
  • hojnikb - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link

    Some people with 840 basic are also reporting slow read..
  • CrazyElf - Tuesday, September 16, 2014 - link

    Factoring in the power loss protection and the fact that you get MLC, albeit at 16nm, I'd say that the MX100 represents a superior drive to this SSD. Oh, and the Ultra II does not support encryption.

    Arguably none of these shortcomings would be a problem for a consumer based drive for the average user, but this drive brings no real advantages over the MX100 in terms of pricing, performance, etc, and several drawbacks.
  • sweeper765 - Tuesday, September 16, 2014 - link

    I wouldn't rush into buying a TLC based drive right now, seeing the problems 840 EVO series is having.

    There are hundreds of users reporting heavy read speed degradation of old written data, reaching only 50mb/s or even 2-3 mb/s in the most extreme cases. Might be a firmware bug but also could be a TLC issue. Who knows?

    http://www.overclock.net/t/1507897/samsung-840-evo...
    http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=...
  • NA1NSXR - Tuesday, September 16, 2014 - link

    So basically a wash, or even arguably a slight loss against 840 EVO, with 850 EVO on the horizon. I don't know if I would've personally given it a "Recommended by Anandtech".
  • Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link

    The 840 EVO is more expensive and not just marginally. While the 850 EVO is coming and may very well be the best value drive when it does, at this point it is just another product in the pipeline. Making recommendations based on a future product that may or may not be faster wouldn't be far in my opinion.
  • Gigaplex - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link

    The only reason I'd consider a TLC drive over an MLC drive is if it was significantly cheaper than competing MLC drives. It's no cheaper than MX100 at 512GB and below, and not that much cheaper than M550 at 1TB. At 50% higher bit density per cell, I was hoping for ballpark 33% cost reduction.
  • hojnikb - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link

    Sadly, it doesn't work like that. Even though it has TLC, most consumers won't care. Sandisk obviously positioned the drive in a price bracked, similar to competition.
  • rtho782 - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link

    In most of these reviews I see complaints about lack of encryption support.

    Why would I, as a home user, want to encrypt my drive? Does it not require additional software and/or motherboard support and mean I can't move the drive to another PC?

    I know businesses like to encrypt their laptops, but I don't understand how encryption would benefit me.
  • jabber - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link

    Unless you really need it for business/legal needs then encryption is a liability in terms of you screw up your drive and then you want to pull any data off it. Certainly never encrypt a drive you use for testing/tweaking/overclocking a PC with thats asking for trouble. If you have a porn collection you want to hide then simply use encrypted file containers. Much safer than full disk for the average Joe. Even those that need encryption by law often don't actually have data worth looking at but it's there to save embarrassment. In 99.9% of cases encryption is only needed to stop the guy that found or stole your laptop looking at what's on there for 2-3 mins before a dodgy copy of Windows 7 or Linux is slapped over the top and the laptop is sold on.
  • Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link

    Our readership is much more than just home users. Many IT managers come to AnandTech to aid their hardware buying decisions, so we want to cater more than just the typical enthusiast needs. Besides, hardware encryption is still a feature after all -- whether you need is up to you like I mentioned in the review. Since some drives in the same price segment have it and others don't, I think it is something that should be noted because having it is better than not having it in any case, even if you don't use as you never know if your needs change.
  • coder111 - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link

    I think we can safely assume any off the shelf/factory based hardware encryption has backdoors by NSA/GCHQ or Chineese intelligence or whoever. So it doesn't protect from governments nor government sponsored industrial espionage. In the best case it protects from information leaks in case of casual theft. At worst, it gives a false sense of security.

    I would never rely on anything except open-source encryption where the source is continuously being reviewed. And even that is can be compromised by introducing hard to detect bugs.

    So I don't think hardware encryption support adds much value if any.
  • jabber - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link

    Can we just cut the reviews for SATA based SSDs down purely to "What makes this SSD radically different to 99% of the similar performing SSDs out there"? Would just save a bit of time that's all. SSDs are now like RAM, all much of a muchness and we just need to know the bells and whistles if any.
  • Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link

    SSDs are way different than RAM is. RAM is managed by a controller that is integrated to the CPU, so the DRAM you buy is basically a bunch of dummy silicon with no logic in itself. If SSDs were just a stick of NAND, then you would be correct, but the truth is that SSDs have a controller and firmware, which makes one SSD different from the other. In addition, NAND is much more complex to manage compared to DRAM because you have all sorts of limitations (page is the minimum write and you can only erase blocks etc.), so there is much more to it than with RAM, which is basically just differently binned pieces of DRAM silicon.

    We could drop all component reviews if we took your mindset because current computers can do pretty much everything that average users want them to do. However, the fact is that there are people who are interested in the details and how things work, and there are people who do more than just web browsing and email, so that is where detailed reviews are needed.
  • Powerlurker - Sunday, September 21, 2014 - link

    StorageReview basically stopped reviewing consumer-grade drives for most second and third tier manufacturers because they got tired of writing reviews that said, "Yep, it's another Sandforce reference design, and it pretty much performs the same as all the others."
  • milli - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link

    I feel that Anand is praising the MX100 just a little bit too much. I had to first hand experience that it's not that good (even for a budget drive). Those bad service times you measure on the MX100 are really noticable in real life usage.
    In my case, five identical i5 machines. Four with 256GB MX100 drives. One with a PNY 240GB Optima (was even cheaper than the MX100). During heavy work, the machine with the Optima was clearly snappier. And I don't mean I measured higher MB/s but snappier. Everything you open just starts to happen/load a little sooner.
    This shows that your reviews for low-end consumer SSDs are too workstation/server minded. The fact that the MX100 start being faster than the Ultra II after a barrage of 10GB of random data, means basically nothing for a casual desktop user. The usual desktop usage is small burst of data. Lots of idle time. You want those burst to happen/start fast.
    You keep pushing encryption as a pro (and it is one) but keep in mind that probably less than 1% of people actually use it.
    My advice? Both the M500 and MX100 are laggy. Drives with Phison controllers are laggy. Transcend SSD 340 (JMicron) felt laggy like the M500.
    PNY Optima didn't feel laggy. Sandisk Ultra Plus didn't feel too laggy either (not perfect though).
    I'm eager to test the Ultra II and the Hynix SH910A (because the Neutron felt so smooth).
    I don't know how you're going to measure this through benchmarks (well the service time one seems to show it) but my brain surely is perceptible to this.
  • hojnikb - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link

    I smell bullshit or defective drives. There is no way, mx100 or m500 for that matter would fell as laggy as phison or jmicron for that matter. Both of those controllers are far inferior to marvell offering. In fact, some older jmicrons and phisons are so bad, that it doesn't even take a heavy user to notice the difference or lag.
  • milli - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link

    Yes, true. I've got dozens of broken drives. ;) Seriously, no bullshit.
    Obviously I'm talking about drives with JMicron and Phison controllers from 2014 and not the older ones.
    Also with laggy I don't mean that I'm waiting seconds, right! As an enthusiast and professional of plus 20 years, a couple fractions of a second make them feel more laggy to me.
  • hojnikb - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link

    Well, considering the workload you have, why didn't you go with more expensive drives in the first place ?

    I mean, those drives are not exactly meant for heavy work you're describing.
  • MrSpadge - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link

    If one of them does it significantly better than the others, that's something worth noting. Especially if it doesn't show in the benchmarks we're used to looking at.
  • milli - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link

    Very true what you say but the clients these machines are meant for, use it for light usage. It's only during preparation of these machines that I notice the differences. The only reason I used the MX100, is because of Anand's recommendation. At first I was skeptical about it because of the M500. It seems that skepticism was just. There are better client usage cheap drives out there.
  • hojnikb - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link

    Name one, that competes with mx100 price wise.
  • milli - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link

    http://techreport.com/r.x/adata-sp610/db2-100-read...
    http://techreport.com/r.x/adata-sp610/db2-100-writ...

    One more confirmation to why the 256GB MX100 felt so sluggish to me during preparation/installation.
  • SSD Fan - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link

    I read this http://techreport.com/review/26905/ocz-arc-100-sol...
    TR compares MX100 with OCZ ARC and comments that ARC is better at the same (or close) price....
  • TelstarTOS - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link

    MX100 all the time. I do not trust TLC reliability, although Sandisk did a good job on this unit.
  • Notmyusualid - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link

    I concurr.

    I have 2x250GB 840 Evo's, and I think they are garbage. Had to beark the RAID0, as they performed so badly.

    I then gave one away to my brother.

    You won't see me buy TLC nand again in this lifetime.

    And by the way, my X25-E is still going strong, without hiccup, as my Linux drive. And how many years is that?
  • sweeper765 - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link

    Of course the 840 EVO's perform badly , the old written data bug is kicking in. I wonder how long does it take Samsung to acknowledge the problem and then fix it (if it's fixable at all)
  • Kristian Vättö - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link

    Stay tuned, I'll have an update to share regarding the bug within a couple of days.
  • hojnikb - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link

    Can't wait :)
    I really wonder whats really up.
  • theuglyman0war - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link

    really like to hear more from 840 pro users regarding this bug...
    Is it really inherent in the TLC?
  • hojnikb - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link

    Nobody seems to have issues with MLC drives. There are lots of reports for 840EVO and a few for 840basic.
    So it must be limited to TLC.
  • theuglyman0war - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link

    considering a RAID with one of the value SSD offerings. Would be nice if these reviews included RAID considerations in these reviews. ( does the SLC n-cache, or the MPR parity effect RAID perhaps? [158Gbit of usable capacity:132 of final user capacity does this effect RAID in ANY way?] )

    And how about a shootout between the mx100 evo 840 and ultra II in RAID configurations.

    As many seem to go on about how final user experience is fine with these value SSDs I would imagine that at RAID speeds that would be doubly true? And the savings more meaningful?
  • steveshin10 - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link

    I always saw your reviews well. Thank you.
    But I have a question about your TRIM Validation test.
    If I want know about my SSDs Trim Performance then I only just follow your method?
    What are difference "MS WHCK's Trim Performance test" and your test.
    And I want know how working about the "WHSK's Trim Performance Test Workload"
    Do you know that? or How can I trace (or see, or known) the "WHCK Trim Perormance Test Workload"?
    Thank you.
  • kgh00007 - Wednesday, September 24, 2014 - link

    Is TLC nand even a good idea considering what is happening to the 840 EVO and older data?

    I'm worried about TLC nand loosing data if it is powered off for a long time.
  • sirkiwi - Friday, October 24, 2014 - link

    Excellent alternative to the MX100. I'll grab a Sandisk rather than a Crucial for my next build.

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now