The Toshiba Q300 SSD Review: Toshiba Becomes a Retail Brand
by Billy Tallis on February 26, 2016 8:00 AM ESTFinal Words
Given the strong hardware similarities to the OCZ Trion 100, I expected the Toshiba Q300 to turn in very similar benchmark scores. Instead, several noticeable differences cropped up: the Q300's latency is more variable, its active power consumption is a bit lower, and it completed The Destroyer a bit quicker. At least some of this (especially improved power efficiency) is probably due to the silicon lottery.
None of that is enough to have much effect on how it ranks. The Q300 is a low-end drive and is among the slowest SSDs on the market. It's hardly alone in that; I've lost count of how many different brands are selling Phison TLC drives. In that sense the Q300 doesn't stand out from that crowd, and while that doesn't make it a bad drive it means that Toshiba is entering a very competitive market with nothing substaintial besides their name to differentiate themselves.
With no clear price or performance advantage over even the OCZ Trion 100, the Q300 currently brings nothing new to the table. Its pricing has generally been at or above the Trion 100, so barring an unusual sale situation, there's little reason not to pick its OCZ doppelgänger. But considering the whole family of the Q300, Trion 100, and more related drives sold by other brands, the combination of Toshiba flash and Phison controller architecture has been successful at offering consumers a good budget option with no major weaknesses. Under light use, they're only slightly slower than MLC drives, rather than crippled as our most intense tests can make them look. Otherwise the SanDisk Ultra II is a better all-around performer, but at the moment only its 480GB capacity is in the lead for price.
| Value SSD Price Comparison | ||||
| Drive | 960GB | 480GB | 240GB | 120GB |
| Toshiba Q300 | $264.99 | $139.00 | $69.99 | $49.99 |
| OCZ Trion 100 | $199.99 | $129.99 | $64.98 | $54.99 |
| OCZ Trion 150 | $269.99 | $139.99 | $69.99 | $50.61 |
| ADATA SP550 | $219.99 | $119.99 | $61.99 | $39.99 |
| Crucial BX200 | $294.97 | $129.99 | $64.99 | |
| SanDisk Ultra II | $238.50 | $120.99 | $74.99 | $54.99 |
Ultimately Toshiba is in a unqiue position here that can work in their favor, even if starting things off with an entry-level drive doesn't allow them to take advantage of it. They are one of the major NAND flash manufacturers, and at the same time they have a special relationship with their controller vendor. Because of that they're not completely vertically integrated the way Samsung is, but they ought to be able to reap many of the same benefits in the long run.
From a product standpoint the Trion 100 did a good job of keeping pace with the price drops over the past several months, but neither it nor the new Q300 are sufficiently differentiated from the rest of the entry-level market. Now that Toshiba is directly participating in the retail SSD market with their own brand, I believe they should try for a unique blockbuster product to firmly establish their place. A big success like Crucial's MX100 or BX100 or Samsung's 850 Pro and EVO would make their retail venture worthwhile and could make either the OCZ or Toshiba brand a major name instead of another face in the crowd.
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cbjwthwm - Monday, March 7, 2016 - link
Yes that quote in the review is out to lunch, this drive had the same problems as the Trion 100 with launching on flawed firmware 11.1, which had major reliability bugs--hence the bad user reviews like the Trion 100. Toshiba's link to the updated 11.2 firmware (from late November) is here:http://support.toshiba.com/support/viewContentDeta...
The reviewer needs to at least search for an updated firmware version before writing such oblivious comments that make his review seem very badly researched right off the mark.
serendip - Friday, February 26, 2016 - link
Big issue with the Q300 and its identical twin OCZ Trion 100 - they don't work with certain Nvidia chipsets, mainly those in Macbooks from 2010 and earlier. You can format the drive on a Macbook but read/write operations stall.OCZ are aware of the problem but have stated on their official forum that they can't do anything to avoid breaking support for newer chipsets. Toshiba haven't said a darn thing.
yuhong - Saturday, February 27, 2016 - link
Is there any more technical details like which part of the SATA protocol the problems comes from?serendip - Saturday, February 27, 2016 - link
No idea, maybe some power management issues? I've tried Sandforce and Samsung 850 Evo drives on those older Macbooks and they work fine. It's the new Toshiba controller that doesn't play well with MCP79/89 chipsets. OCZ have known about this for 3 months and have told customers facing this situation to get a refund and buy another drive whereas Toshiba are keeping silent. Guess that OCZ acquisition hasn't streamlined corporate lines of communication.Kristian Vättö - Sunday, February 28, 2016 - link
From what I've heard it's a problem Apple would have to fix through a firmware update. OCZ/Toshiba can't fix it, or at least not without massive changes. In the end it's a relatively small niche anyway.serendip - Saturday, February 27, 2016 - link
It happens only under OSX, all versions, on the Nvidia MCP chipset platform. The Q300 works fine in Windows on those affected Macbooks.cbjwthwm - Monday, March 7, 2016 - link
The nVidia SATA compatibility problem lies with the drive's Phison S10 controller, and it affects all products using that controller from various manufacturers such as Patriot, Corsair, and Kingston lines using it. Since Phison has been sitting on their hands with this issue for around a year a half (its first use was the Neutron XT iirc), I doubt they're going to get their act together for OCZ but I suppose we can hope?Harry Lloyd - Saturday, February 27, 2016 - link
Still waiting for a decent 500 GB drive under 100 $. Near the end of this year, maybe?dealcorn - Monday, February 29, 2016 - link
I understand that you can not test Devslp. Does Toshiba represent that the Q300 supports Devslp?watzupken - Monday, February 29, 2016 - link
For me, planar TLC will never fly, especially after the Samsung EVO 840 fiasco. The combination of TLC with shrinking NAND size is a perfect recipe for disaster, not to mention that they are not significantly cheaper than their MLC counterpart. There are MLC SSDs out there that run on lesser known controllers, but for some brands I feel its more reliable than the TLC+planar NAND combination.