It has always been said that what goes around comes around. Looking back historically at the SSD industry, everyone knew that, at some point, the NAND manufacturers would force smaller third party SSD manufacturers to cut prices drastically…or disappear. And so they did. Times change though and this year at Computex 2018, Taipei, we are seeing what many might consider …
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Samsung 970 EVO M.2 NVMe SSD Review (500GB/1TB) – Evo Becomes a Top Tier SSD
For some time now, Samsung has used a marketing approach with respect to flash media that accommodates both business and the consumer. They produce the Pro M.2 NVMe SSD series for business and media needs and the EVO M.2 NVMe family for consumer use, and at a relatively modest price point. One has top performance and the other…is a bit …
Read More »Samsung 970 Pro M.2 NVMe SSD Review (1TB) – The Cost of Being The Worlds Best
I really never thought of it until this morning but, living in the era of seeing analog televisions switch to digital makes me old….real old. Most of today’ younger generation haven’t a clue what a CRT television is (that is cathode ray television), much less what it weighed when you had to reposition or move it. Let’s not even speak …
Read More »Kingston A1000 M.2 NVMe SSD Review (480/960GB)
Looking back ten years or so to when SSDs were introduced, I would have never have believed that hard drives would still be the main system storage choice this far down the line. They are larger, slower, noisier, require more power which results in less portable battery life, lack security and endurance, and their performance is significantly less than an …
Read More »HP EX900 NVMe M.2 SSD Review (500GB)
It was only a few days back that we reviewed the HP EX920 NVMe SSD at the 1TB capacity and determined that it held an absolutely great price point for the performance it presented. Today, we are taking a look at the little brother to that SSD, the HP EX900 NVMe which HP hopes will hit a home run when …
Read More »HP EX920 M.2 NVMe SSD Review (1TB) – Great Speed for a Dynamite Price
High performance, low power, increased system responsiveness, high reliability, small form factor, minimum weight, enhanced ruggedness along with high data integrity and security; these are the selling points made by HP with respect to their newest HP EX920 M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe SSD. As much as this description might fit any of the latest gen M.2 SSD family, HP …
Read More »SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD Review (1TB)
There are three constants evident in the storage industry in recent years, these being increased performance, increased capacity and lower pricing. We could probably include such things as product build quality and warranty in this, however, those three features traditionally have made up that golden triangle. The consumer wants value. They need a higher capacity and with media quality and …
Read More »Bootable VROC RAID0 and 4x Intel Optane 800P SSDs
It has been some time now since Intel introduced VROC (Virtual RAID on CPU) and VROC provides for a capability on our motherboards that all would have hoped to see some time ago; the ability to create a bootable RAID configuration. At the consumer and enthusiast level, VROC is only available in newer X299 chipset motherboards at present, and these …
Read More »Intel Optane 800P SSD Review (58/118GB)
If you are in touch with storage technology at all, Intel Optane will be familiar to you and, in fact, we have even gone so far as to describe it as a ‘game changer’ or ‘disruptive technology’ in a previous report. If you are not ‘up to spec’ on the ins and outs of storage, let’s just say that SSDs …
Read More »The SSD Reviewers Guide to SSD Optimization 2018
Catch lines are everything. If you are reading this, that title has done its job and it’s now in my hands to keep you here. My name is Les Tokar and I am an SSD Reviewer. I have worked in flash media since it rolled out to the public ten years ago and have written extensively on SSDs to the …
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