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The SanDisk Ultra Plus 256GB is a well rounded, capable Solid State drive that now hits the £130-£140 mark in the United Kingdom. It is not at the same performance level as the fastest drives available today, but the results throughout our testing are certainly commendable.
The Sandisk Ultra Plus 256GB drive is powered by the Marvell SS889175 controller and it deals with incompressible and compressible data equally well. It isn't quite at the same level as the Marvell SS889187 dual core controller which we tested recently powering the Plextor 128GB M5M mSATA drive.
We noticed a little fluctuation when testing the Ultra Plus 256GB, especially in the ATTO benchmark, something we didn't experience with the same test system and the drive powered by the Marvell SS889187 controller.
Sequential read speed is around the 500-510MB/s mark (read) and 445 MB/s (write). This places the drive a little lower than the market leaders, although in real world situations it really would be difficult to ascertain differences. IOPS performance is very good and better than many drives in a similar category.
The drive was available at Amazon for £130, but it has sold out and Amazon are pushing partner sales now (£15 higher). SCAN are selling it for £139.50 inc vat. If you are looking for a less expensive option at a similar capacity, then the 250GB Samsung 840 Series is available for only £127.98 inc vat.
Pros:
- Price point is decent.
- good performance with compressible and incompressible data.
- IOPS performance is above average.
Cons:
- a lot of competition.
- A marginal price drop would help.
- outperformed by market leaders.
Kitguru says: A solid all round purchase, especially if you need to deal with incompressible and compressible data on a regular basis.
