Tag Archives: Anvil

One of the oldest names in SSDs is Kingston.  One might not expect such as Kingston, by all sense of the term, is a third party manufacturer…or distributor.  Unlike Samsung, WD/SanDisk, Intel, Kioxia, Micron, SKHynix and a few others, they do not actually own a fab that ‘grows’ the silicon ingots to manufacture NAND wafers.  Unbelievably, the original Kingston SSDNow …

The Innogrit Ranier Gen4 NVMe SSD controller has met with much success since the company officially came out of stealth mode.   The success of this controller is testament to the experience within the company.  Their management team is led by their CEO Dr. Zining Wu who served as Chief Technology Officer before leaving Marvell, most of his Management Team following …

The popularity of CFExpress Type B cards has been overwhelming over the past year and we are certain that it will continue to grow as newer digital equipment is released with this type of storage in mind.  It moves us from under 100MB/s data transfer speed for most up to over 5x that with CFExpress highs of 1700MB/s.  Don’t get …

Type B CFExpress cards have gained massive popularity as of late  but what about CFExpress Type A.  Has it been forgotten?  The unfortunate reality of CFExpress Type A cards is that they are a very niche product limited to very few Sony cameras; the Sony a7S III, FX3 and Fx6 specifically. If it’s a professional DSLR that has CFExpress storage, …

So I was in a conversation this week where many were speaking of the success of the Phison E18 controller and I stepped away from the crowd for a bit and had to ask, “Yes but will this last?”  Historically, we have watched different SSD companies, and more specifically, third party SSD controller companies step into the limelight with a …

Perhaps one of the odd ducks in the SSD space has always been Plextor.  Their SSDs have always been amongst the best, but for some reason, they never gained the recognition they deserved.  That’s not just my thought I am sure as reviewers historically have had nothing but good to say about Plextor SSDs.  They are one of the very …

It isn’t often that we receive review samples of the same product from both the chip and product manufacturers within days, but such is the case with this report.  In this instance, it is a very good thing as we are reviewing the Kingston XS2000 Portable SSD and this is a permanently enclosed unit, whereas we have also received the …

We have been testing a new SSD that is about to be introduced by XPG and something about this SSD caught our eye.  It is in the XPG marketing pitch actually. A highlight of this marketing states that the XPG GAMMIX S70 Blade NVMe Gen 4 SSD is ‘Perfect for Compact and Thin Devices’ and that this SSD is ‘Cool …

It was only a matter of time until SSDs really got hooked into the gaming scene and today, there isn’t a gamer around without flash media overseeing the storage of their gaming system.  Seagate released their FireCuda 520 back in  December of 2019 with the ‘FireCuda Gaming’ label and today we are reporting on their latest release, the FireCuda 530 …

Much has changed in PC sales through the years, yet much is the same.  Things can be unpredictable.  Looking back, there have been instances of manufacturers selling their own brand laptops and ultra books equipped with competitors SSDs as storage, simply to maximize sales of their own higher cost…and higher performing SSDs. In fact, if you think you are getting …