The market of storage is one of compromises. On one hand, you get large capacities at the expense of speed. On the other, fast transfers without the joys of having an open field to store them. But as technology progresses, the luxurious tag often branded to these devices shrink at an incredible pace. Now, Transcend has a solution, marrying both advantages. They claim that it’s a value-oriented answer to our woes. But is it? We have Transcend’s SSD370S, a 1TB Solid State Drive, to check if it is good enough to have in your PC.
Physical Features
This one sports a Spartan design. No frills, no checkered outline, only the logo and its name are present.
Performance
| Bench Buddy | |
| CPU | Intel Core i5-4670K |
| VGA | ASUS GTX780 Strix OC |
| Memory | 16GB |
| SSD | Transcend SSD370S 1TB SSD |
| Motherboard | ROG Maximus VII Gene |
For our benchmarks, we used four popular programs that are widely known for checking write/read speeds.
Wait, wait! What do these numbers mean?
Well, from a consumer’s point of view, these numbers dictate how fast an SSD is given a number of trials in reading/writing data. Although data is not as concise or clean cut as projected by these tests, they are good indicators of how well the drives would perform under controlled scenarios. As SSDs and HDDs have one job (clue: it stores), manufacturers duke it out in terms of performance and implementation of their respective technologies and available hardware.
As always, the SSD is faster than an HDD. Given its design and means, an SSD trumps over the traditional disk-based storage by a large margin. Even when the said SSD is within the budget segment.
Crystal DiskMark
CrystalDiskMark is a disk benchmark software.It measure sequential reads/writes speed,measure random 512KB, 4KB, 4KB (Queue Depth=32) reads/writes speed,select test data (Random, 0Fill, 1Fill),provide theme support and Multi-Language support.
While not giving off a stellar performance, the Transcend SSD370S performs pretty well with their sequential writing. The read speeds in 4K are somewhat a match with its high-end rivals.
HD Tune Pro
HD Tune Pro is a hard disk / SSD utility with many functions. It can be used to measure the drive’s performance, scan for errors, check the health status (S.M.A.R.T.), securely erase all data and much more.
Read
| Kingston HyperX Savage 240GB | |||
| MB/s | Min | Ave | Max |
| Write | 352.2 | 368.9 | 363.4 |
| Read | 432.9 | 446.3 | 443.0 |
ATTO Disk Benchmark
The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes.
Anvil Storage Utilities
Anvil’s Storage Utilities has been designed to be the most comprehensive benchmark tool for Solid State Drives on the market.
Verdict
The SSD370S is yet to arrive in Philippine shores but it might find itself in an uphill battle. With a price of US$360 (approx. Php 16,800), it only has a meager difference with other brands such as Samsung and Crucial. Sadly, their claim of being an affordable solution can just go into the bin unless they aggressively change the local price of this one. I may not have the performance values of the two other brands in 1TB but if brand namesake is a dealbreaker for you, then it might be troublesome.
In terms of performance, it is faster than the run of the mill drives. If you’re planning on building a new PC or system, then this is a must-buy. The 1TB SSD provides a definite advantage if you’re playing open-world video games, essentially removing the constant loading of game elements making the experience smoother and faster. I played with GTA V installed on the drive and it was a blissful experience and I have yet to encounter the jaggedness usual to my HDD-equipped friends. And that in itself is a great reason to get an SSD this size.
The Transcend SSD370S comes with a 3-year warranty.
