Samsung EVO Plus 512GB MicroSD Card Review: Speedy Device Storage

The humble SD card has evolved in a number of ways since its introduction two decades ago. While early SD cards could hardly store more photos than a roll of film, modern cards may offer the capacity to contain hours of high-quality HD video. SD cards have also become commonly used as boot drives for lightweight operating systems, powering everything from Raspberry Pi's to server hypervisors. SD Cards, and MicroSD cards in particular, can also be useful for expanding the storage of cell phones and even laptops. Samsung introduced its blazing fast EVO Plus UHS-I MicroSD cards last year, featuring...

Intel Unleashes 56-Core Xeon, Optane DC Memory, Agilex FGPAs To Accelerate AI And Big Data

by Marco Chiappetta - Tue, Apr 02, 2019

Intel is launching its latest salvo of data-centric products today, targeting a wide range of workloads and applications. You may think that means a fresh batch of powerful Xeons are on the way – and you’d be correct but there's more. Today marks the official arrival of Intel’s Cascade Lake, many-core 2nd Generation Xeon Scalable Series Processors, but the company is also announcing or launching a plethora of adjacent products including new FPGAs, innovative network controllers, a new server chassis platform, and Optane DC Persistent memory. And along with those powerful Xeon...

ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro SSD Review: Strong Performance, Aggressive Price

by Marco Chiappetta - Thu, Mar 21, 2019

When we evaluated the original ADATA XPG SX8200 SSD last year, we found the drive to be a solid value that offered good performance for the money. So, when ADATA mentioned that it had an updated version of the XPG SX8200 available for review that should perform even better, we were eager to check it out. The aptly named ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro is similar to the original drive in many ways, but incorporates a new controller and firmware that cranks performance up a few notches and adds some new features. The ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro’s main features and specifications are outlined in the table below....

Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus Review: Optimized For Speed

by Marco Chiappetta - Tue, Jan 22, 2019

Although its SSD 970 EVO and 970 Pro solid state drives are widely considered to be some of the best currently available for the PC, Samsung is at the ready with a brand new line of drives dubbed the SSD 970 EVO Plus. As its name suggests, the Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus is similar to the original EVOs, but these new drives leverage Samsung’s latest TLC NAND flash memory. The firmware on these SSDs has been further optimized to increase performance as well, but they leverage the same controller and have similar amounts of DRAM on-board. We’ve got a table below comparing the 970 EVO Plus...

WD My Passport Wireless SSD Review: Network Storage On The Go

by Chris Goetting - Fri, Jan 18, 2019

Western Digital is one of the world’s largest storage manufacturers with a wide array of products to meet their customer's unique needs. Its My Passport Wireless line of external drives offer more than just convenient storage. With on-board Wi-Fi, battery, and SD card readers, WD bills them as a working photographer’s best friend. That certainly sounds like a common use case for a device like this, but will this latest WD My Passport live up to its promise? WD sent over their latest My Passport Wireless SSD for us to use and review. The SSD version is available in capacities from...

SSD Storage Shopping Guide: Best Bang For Your Bits

by Michael J. A. Sexton - Fri, Dec 21, 2018

The solid state storage market is highly competitive, and it is also one that changes rapidly as the technology continues to evolve and prices fluctuate due to various factors. There are dozens of companies with multiple product lines that vie for dominance in the SSD space, which can make selecting a drive for a system a rather daunting task for the uninitiated. In this piece, we'll endeavor to make the task of buying an SSD a little easier for everyone by shining the spotlight on what we consider to be some of the better SSD deals currently available in a wide range of prices and capacities....

Patriot EVLVR Portable Thunderbolt 3 SSD Review: Sleek, Snappy, Solid

by Shannon Robb - Thu, Nov 29, 2018

Patriot is perhaps one of the lesser-known PC component and accessory manufacturers in comparison to large players like Kingston or Corsair, but the Northern California-based company has actually been around since 1985. About 10 years ago, Patriot launched its Viper Gaming brand, which offers high-performance gaming memory and peripherals. The product we have today, the Patriot EVLVR, is from Patriot's more business-facing product lines and it is an external, portable NVMe SSD which employs the Thunderbolt 3 interface for full PCIe Gen 3 performance capabilities. The Patriot EVLVR Portable...

Toshiba XG6 NVMe SSD Review: BiCS Flash Puts Up 3GB/Sec Performance

by Marco Chiappetta - Wed, Aug 29, 2018

Toshiba has released a string of top-notch, affordable NVMe solid state drives over the last couple of years featuring its BiCS flash memory technology, which target a wide array of market segments. We’ve shown you a few recently, like the diminutive, affordable OCZ RC100 and the mainstream OEM targeted, XG5. Today, Toshiba is redoubling its efforts in the OEM segment with yet another new client NVMe drive, the XG6. We first posted news of the XG6 a few weeks back – if you’d like to check out the initial announcement, it is available right here. Like the XG5, this new drive...

Samsung X5 Thunderbolt 3 Portable SSD Review: Ridiculously Fast External Storage

by Marco Chiappetta - Tue, Aug 28, 2018

Samsung has been a leader in the solid state storage market for a number of years. Whether you were looking for affordable SATA-based offerings or high-performance NVMe gumsticks, Samsung usually has an answer. And we’re not just talking about internal drives either; Samsung has also released a number of excellent external storage devices, like the T3 and last year’s T5, for example. What Samsung hasn’t had was an ultra-high speed external solid state device that shed the limitations of legacy interfaces – until today, that is. Samsung’s latest storage product, the...

Intel SSD 660p Review: Snappy NVMe Storage At Rock-Bottom Prices

by Marco Chiappetta - Tue, Aug 07, 2018

Intel has taken another step forward in its perpetual march towards high-capacity, lower-cost solid state drives. Today’s release of the new Intel SSD 660p series of drives marks the first in the company’s line-up to pack its brand-new 64-layer QLC (quad-level cell) 3D NAND Flash memory, which essentially doubles the capacities available within the same footprint of previous-gen technologies. The Intel SSD 660p series also leverages NVMe technology, the M.2 form factor, and it employs firmware that’s tuned specifically for mainstream, consumer class workloads. These drives...

SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD Review: Compact, Rugged USB-C External Storage

by Joel Santo Domingo - Tue, Jul 31, 2018

The SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD we'll be showing you here today is the follow-up to the SanDisk Extreme 510 Portable SSD. This new drive fully embraces USB-C while retaining USB Type-A compatibility for older Macs and PCs. It promises speedy storage (up to 550 MB/s claimed), a wide range of capacities (250GB, 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB), and an IP55 rating against dust and water intrusion. The drive’s slim body looks more like a portable charger for your cell phone than the bulky external hard drives of old, and it fits in a shirt pocket easily. It feels rugged, with black soft-touch...

Intel Optane Memory Update: Making Hard Drives Perform Like Fast SSDs

by Marco Chiappetta - Mon, Jul 02, 2018

When Intel initially released its Optane Memory line-up, it was one of the most potent and effective storage acceleration products available, right out of the gate. Due to its 3D Xpoint memory technology, which enables consistent, low-latency, high-speed data transfers at low-queue depths, Intel’s Optane Memory is ideally suited for caching smaller chunks of data in consumer systems. Couple Optane Memory’s unique performance characteristics with Intel’s robust caching algorithms and it showcases the effectiveness of Intel’s solution with today’s PCs. Intel has since...

ADATA XPG SX8200 SSD Review: Affordable, Quick NVMe-Based Storage

by Marco Chiappetta - Wed, Jun 20, 2018

The latest generation of NVMe-based solid state drives have significantly altered the value proposition for performance-conscious PC enthusiasts. Whereas the NVMe drives of “old” were significantly more expensive than SATA-based products, while offering somewhat higher performance, many of today’s drives are only slightly higher priced and may offer 5 – 6x the peak throughput. Case in point, the ADATA XPG SX8200 we will be showing you here today. This ADATA drive is a speedy, yet affordable solid state drive that offers peak read and write speeds of 3200/1700MB per second,...

Toshiba OCZ RC100 SSD Review: Tiny, Affordable NVMe Storage

by Marco Chiappetta - Tue, Jun 12, 2018

Although we first caught a glimpse of the SSD that would become the Toshiba OCZ RC100 back at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, they are now ready for public consumption and Toshiba has just begun shipping the drives. If you’re not hip to the OCZ RC100, it’s a new family of solid state drives that’s specifically designed to push the NVMe interface and smaller M.2 form factor further down into mainstream price points. Toshiba accomplishes this feat by using a single-package design that packs the NAND flash memory and controller into a single chip. The drive’s design...

WD Black NVMe SSD Review: Affordable With Great Write Speeds

by Marco Chiappetta - Fri, May 11, 2018

Western Digital recently launched a new family of NVMe-based solid state drives targeting gamers and enthusiasts. The simply-branded WD Black NVMe SSD family has a similar naming convention to some previous-generation solid state drives built by the company, but these latest offerings are packing some new technology and offer performance much higher than any of the earlier WD-made storage product offerings that came before it. The WD Black NVMe SSD family features a new controller, 64-layer BiCS3 3D TLC NAND flash memory, an intelligently laid-out PCB that optimizes thermal characteristics, and...

Intel Optane SSD 905P Review: Seriously Fast Storage For Enthusiasts

by Marco Chiappetta - Thu, May 03, 2018

Intel is upping the ante in the enthusiast storage space again, with a brand-new 3D Xpoint-based drive called the Optane SSD 905P. As its name implies, the Optane SSD 905P isn’t a major departure from the Optane SSD 900P that was released a few month back, but Intel was worked a bit of magic to improve performance in a few ways. Peak capacity of the drive has also been doubled, and a new, edgier design language makes a debut – complete with integrated lighting. We put the Intel Optane SSD 905P through a battery of benchmarks on our updated test bed and have our results laid out for...

Samsung SSD 970 Pro And 970 EVO Review: Faster, More Endurance Than 960

by Marco Chiappetta - Tue, Apr 24, 2018

Samsung has been at the forefront of NVMe-based solid state storage essentially since the standard’s inception. The Samsung SSD 960 Pro and 960 EVO that were released all the way back in 2016 have been among the best performing, most sought after M.2 NVMe-based gumsticks available. It’s kind of hard to believe the 960 Pro and 960 EVO have been riding high for so long in such a rapidly advancing space, but it’s true. Samsung, however, is finally ready to supplant its popular drives with the brand-new – you guessed it – SSD 970 Pro and 970 EVO series that we’re...

Intel SSD DC P4510 NVMe PCIe Review: Blistering 3GB/s Transfers, With Low Latency

by Marco Chiappetta - Wed, Mar 14, 2018

Intel has released a dizzying array of solid state storage products over the last few weeks. We recently took a look at a pair of Intel Optane SSD 800P series drives for enthusiast desktop and mobile systems, and also tinkered with the impressive Intel SSD DC P4600 series enterprise-class NVMe drive. Today, we’ll stay in the enterprise space and inspect a pair of Intel’s recently-announced SSD DC P4510 series drives, which target cloud storage applications with impressive throughput and latency characteristics. The Intel SSD DC P4510 series is an evolution of the existing SSD DC P4500,...

Intel Optane SSD 800P Review: A Speedy M.2 Solid State Drive With 3D XPoint For The Masses

by Marco Chiappetta - Thu, Mar 08, 2018

Intel is launching its latest Optane-branded family of solid state drives today, the Intel Optane SSD 800P. Unlike the Intel Optane Memory devices, which accelerate hybrid storage configurations through intelligent data caching, or the Optane SSD 900P that’s aimed squarely at hardcore enthusiasts with big budgets, the Intel Optane 800P targets the meat of the mobile and desktops markets, with higher capacities than Optane Memory, but much more affordable pricing than the 900P. The Intel Optane SSD 800P can technically be used as a data caching accelerator like Optane Memory, but these...

Samsung SSD 860 EVO M.2 SATA Review: Fast, Affordable Solid State Storage

by Marco Chiappetta - Wed, Feb 14, 2018

Samsung recently launched its latest SATA-based solid state drives, the SSD 860 Pro and SSD 860 EVO, featuring 2-bit (MLC) or 3-bit (TLC) versions of the company’s 64-layer 3D V-NAND flash memory. We’ve put up a review of a 2.5” Samsung SSD 860 Pro 2TB drive a couple of weeks back, but have something a bit different in store for you today. On tap here is an evaluation of a 2TB Samsung SSD 860 EVO, but of the M.2 variety. This drive is still packing a SATA interface, but is designed for the sleeker, more modern M.2 2280 form factor. In the current PC landscape, which is chock full...

Intel SSD DC P4600 NVMe PCIe Review: Low-Latency TLC Storage For The Data Center

by Marco Chiappetta - Fri, Feb 02, 2018

Last year, Intel updated its line-up of NVMe, PCI Express-based solid state drives, for cloud and data center applications, with a couple of different models tuned for different workloads. The Intel SSD DC P4600 we will be showing you here was among those drives. It features a fourth-generation Intel controller and performance-optimized firmware, along with 3D TLC NAND flash memory (384Gb per die). If you remember, the DC P3700 we looked at a few years back had an 18-channel controller and MLC NAND, so the P4600 may sound like a downgrade in some respects, but as you’ll see a little later,...

Intel SSD 760P Review: Higher Performance, Lower Cost NVMe Storage

by Marco Chiappetta - Tue, Jan 23, 2018

Intel is refreshing its mainstream NVMe-based solid state storage line-up with a brand new SSD targeting mobile and desktop platforms, that has much higher performance but lower power consumption than its predecessors. The Intel SSD 760P series of solid state drives being introduced today combine the latest Intel 3D NAND with a third-party controller, and some custom firmware, to increase performance versus previous-gen offerings but also bring NVMe SSD pricing closer to SATA. We’ve got a 512GB Intel SSD 760P series drive in house and have tested it alongside a wide range of NVMe PCIe-based...