MyDigitalSSD BP4 2.5" & mSATA (240GB) Review

Power Consumption

Given the increasing usage of SSDs in laptops, power consumption is playing an even bigger role than before. A power efficient SSD can potentially add an hour or more of extra battery life, whereas an inefficient SSD can consume more power than a traditional hard drive. MyDigitalSSD touted low power consumption being one of the main advantages of the BP4 and it definitely lives up to the claim. Idle power draw is similar to what we saw with Samsung's SSD 840/840 Pro while load power consumption is average. Especially for light workloads, idle power consumption is what you should look at because the drive will be idling most of the time.

The mSATA BP4 has higher power consumption but that's most likely due to the mSATA to SATA adapter. mSATA drives use 3.3V whereas the standard SATA provides a 5V rail, so the voltage has to be lowered with a voltage regulator, which uses some power as well. Anand did some measurements between 3.3V and 5V power consumption a while ago, but unfortunately our adapters are not the same so I'm not sure how much power my adapter is drawing. However, the 2.5" BP4 should serve as a good reference point since the mSATA version is essentially the same.