Transcend SSD370S 256GB SSD review – a great budget performer to breathe new life into your old PC

A few years back people would still prefer the HDD over the SSD due to only one reason – cost. Since then things have changed dramatically and the price of the conventional SSDs have fallen to the point where it’s not a rarely seen upgrade. Now SSDs are getting faster and have more storage than ever and eventually the prices will fall more, but what if we want a more balanced solution? Well, Transcend claims their SSD370S series is up for the challenge and will satisfy the vast majority of users out there.

So we’ve got the SSD370S, which is offered in 32GB, 64GB, 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB flavors, but the one we are going to test is the 256GB version and this is probably the most common after the 128GB variant. Here’s what to expect from this SSD.

You can check the price and availability of the Transcend SSD370S here: http://amzn.to/1Ms4XXB

Contents

Retail package

The drive comes in a small box containing the usual user manuals and a 3.5-inch bracket for desktop PCs.

Introduction

Transcend introduced the SSD at Computex a year ago, but it has been on the market for a long time now and it’s time to take a closer look at the company’s offering. There are some interesting features that this device offers and other competitors don’t, but it will also be interesting to see how it stacks against more expensive solutions in this segment.

We start off with the custom firmware that the SSD is shipping with. The device uses Silicon Motion SM2246EN controller that has been relabeled to TS6500. This isn’t a rare practice because most of the manufacturers want to distinguish themselves on the market and clear out the confusion. The SM2246EN can be considered as a mainstream controller and it’s easy to be mixed up with other SSDs on the market. However, as we all know the controller itself isn’t sufficient to bring a significant change in the performance as its only task is to spit out the numbers needed for calculation. Actually the firmware is the heart of the SSD and it’s an important aspect that should be considered when looking for a reliable and high-performance solution.

The SSD370S uses a custom firmware from Transcend unlike some manufacturers that rely on Silicon Motion’s end to end solutions that offer the whole package – controller hardware and firmware. So this will be the crucial part to determine whether or not this SSD performs better than its common competitors.

Transcend hasn’t added the usual AES and TCG Opal encryptions but most probably it can be manually enabled via the custom firmware, which, by the way, isn’t available to the end customer, but PC OEMs can take advantage of it. Another feature that has been left out is the HIPM+DIPM, but this time it’s because Transcend believes it will cause a lot of headaches to users that have systems that don’t support slumber power modes as intended.

This brings us to the next notable feature that’s more of a hardware implementation. Transcend has included ceramic capacitors integrated on the circuit board that will provide juice if there’s a sudden power loss. These capacitors, however, don’t offer enough capacity to move everything from the DRAM to the NAND, but will surely save the information on the NAND.

Next in line is the StaticDataRefresh Technology by Transcend. This ensures the good health of the cells that contain the data, besides the conventional ECC method. The latter can help to a certain extent, but if the limit of corrupted cells is exceeded there’s nothing more that can be done. As for the StaticDataRefresh, this feature monitors the health of all cells and when the threshold is reached, StaticDataRefresh comes into play, rewrites the data and restores the cell’s charge level.

On the NAND front, the drive uses Micron 128Gbit 20nm MLC NAND that’s been used for quite some time now, mainly in cost-oriented SSDs. But keep in mind that the next generation 16nm NAND from Micron is already in circulation and some SSDs will probably feature the newer technology.

Test system

Specs sheet

The specs sheet below is listed by the manufacturer, while the actual performance is in the next section – “Performance and benchmarking”

Software

As some other manufacturers, Transcend has provided an additional software that enhances the user experience and has a few useful tools. It’s called SSD Scope and provides information about the drive itself, the health of the device, it can scan, erase, repair, update the firmware and even clone your OS for easier migration between your storage devices. You can also monitor your performance which leads us to our next section…

Performance and benchmarking

We started off by checking the performance of the device using SSD Scope and then double-checked the results with an alternative popular benchmark software – CrystalDiskMark.

SSD Scope

CrystalDiskMark

AS SSD Benchmark

Verdict

The Transcend SSD370S SSD is a great performer for its price and the cost per gigabyte is considerably lower than some competitor models. While it lacks some encryption options and other features, Transcend is offering more than the bare minimum for the price. The custom firmware inside this thing unlocks some potential that the controller alone can’t achieve and this is an aspect worth considering, especially given the price point.

The bottom line is that the device offers great cost/performance and cost/gigabyte value and there’s nothing that we can actually complain about, except for the limited to 3 years warranty. Most of the competitors on the market go as long as 5 or 10-year warranties, but the estimated life of the drive is 280TB written, given by the manufacturer, is more than enough for a good life span. Still, if you are looking for more premium offerings, the Samsung EVO, and SanDisk Extreme Pro series are out there, but the Transcend SSD370S is a perfect choice to breathe new life into your old PC without emptying your wallet.

You can check the price and availability of the Transcend SSD370S here: http://amzn.to/1Ms4XXB