SanDisk Extreme Pro SSD (240GB, 480GB & 960GB) Review: The Fastest Just Got Faster
by Kristian Vättö on June 16, 2014 4:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
- SSDs
- SanDisk
- Extreme Pro
Final Words
The Extreme Pro is without a doubt the fastest SATA 6Gbps SSD in the market. As Anand said in the Extreme II review, SanDisk has picked an excellent balance of IO consistency and peak performance, resulting in high performance regardless of the workload. Too often I have seen manufacturers focusing on just one or the other, with the end result being an unbalanced drive. Intel's SSD 730 is a prime example of this -- its random write consistency is one of the best we have ever seen, but the lack of peak performance makes it a middle-class performer in our Storage Benches. In the end, real world performance is a mix of consistency and peak performance because the drive is not constantly hammered with high queue depth write activity (which is why peak performance matters) but on the other hand it must also be able to handle a constant IO load consistently.
My only real complaint is SanDisk's decision to not include TCG Opal 2.0 support in the the Extreme Pro. Right now there are no high performance client SSDs with proper encryption support, and I think that's a niche SanDisk should have taken onboard. Currently you can buy the Crucial MX100/M550 or Samsung 840 EVO to get proper encryption support, but that comes at the cost of performance. In my opinion a user should not have to decide between performance and encryption because both are vital. There is hope that the X300s fills the gap by providing Extreme Pro class performance with full encryption support, but I am afraid that the limited availability and the higher price would make it out of reach for most consumers. We will see when we get one in for testing.
| NewEgg Price Comparison (6/15/2014) | ||||
| 240/256GB | 480/512GB | 960GB/1TB | ||
| SanDisk Extreme Pro | $200 | $370 | $600 | |
| SanDisk Extreme II | $172 | $308 | - | |
| SanDisk Ultra Plus | $143 | - | - | |
| Crucial MX100 | $108 | $220 | - | |
| Crucial M550 | $157 | $305 | $496 | |
| Plextor M6S | $165 | $400 | - | |
| ADATA Premier Pro SP920 | $150 | - | - | |
| Intel SSD 730 | $219 | $445 | - | |
| Intel SSD 530 | $165 | $330 | - | |
| OCZ Vector 150 | $200 | $360 | - | |
| Samsung SSD 840 EVO | $150 | $255 | $450 | |
| Samsung SSD 840 Pro | $199 | $437 | - | |
There is no way that the Extreme Pro can compete with Crucial MX100 and Samsung 840 EVO in price but it is a totally different animal with substantially higher performance. When the Extreme Pro is compared against other high-end SSD, namely Intel's SSD 730, OCZ's Vector 150 and Samsung's 840 Pro, the prices are quite competitive. NewEgg does not have any stock at the time of writing, but I would not be surprised to see the prices falling a bit once the drive becomes available later this month.
All in all, the Extreme Pro is the only no compromise high-end SSD in the market (aside from the Extreme II, of course). Its performance is unmatched by any other SATA 6Gbps drive and it is the only truly high performance SSD with proper power management, making it perfect for mobile use as well. It's also the first high-end SSD in 1TB-class capacity, so there is no longer a need to choose between performance and capacity. As long as you can live without hardware encryption support, I am comfortable with saying that the Extreme Pro is currently the best SATA 6Gbps SSD in the market for users who seek the highest performance with consistency.
SanDisk is turning out to be a very dangerous player in the client SSD space. With nearly perfect vertical integration model (they just lack client controller silicon and DRAM), SanDisk has the ability to put against Samsung and Intel who have traditionally held the performance crown. Before the Extreme II, SanDisk was fairly unnoticeable in the retail SSD market, but the Extreme II acted as a warning of SanDisk's skill and knowhow, and the Extreme Pro just further reinforces that. If SanDisk can keep their pace going with PCIe SSDs, others will have hard time keeping up with them.
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vaayu64 - Tuesday, June 17, 2014 - link
Look for the review here on anandtech....Shiitaki - Monday, June 16, 2014 - link
Actually, Samsung sells the 840 EVO up to 1TB in a msata.apertotes - Monday, June 16, 2014 - link
Well, I am just a simple architect, and probably I am not representative of Anandtech userbase, but, why do you feel hardware encryption is so important? Am I missing something? Should I be worried that my hard drives are not encrypted?r3loaded - Monday, June 16, 2014 - link
I'm wondering about the focus on encryption too. I have a Samsung Evo in my Sandy Bridge desktop machine and it supposedly supports this Opal hardware encryption. Trouble is, I have no idea how to enable it. Apparently, I can set a disk password but I see no option for that in my computer's firmware. Someone mentioned enabling BitLocker in Windows 8.1, but I get an error message saying my system doesn't have a TPM chip. I have zero idea how to go about enabling it on Linux, but I suppose dm-crypt for software encryption should work just fine.andychow - Monday, June 16, 2014 - link
I don't get it either. If your file system is not encrypted, then simply plugin the ssd to another machine and get all the data. If your file system is encrypted, then what does it matter if the hardware is encrypted? I think they just offer it because it costs them almost nothing to have a hardware encryption chip, and enterprises like buzzwords.@reloaded, you don't have to enable it, it's always on. The password is on the controller, if you destroy that, the data could not be recuperated. But why would you destroy the controller and not the rest of the drive is beyond me.
I personally don't see the point.
chiechien - Tuesday, June 17, 2014 - link
Your BIOS has to support disk passwords, and you have to enable it. For drives with hardware encryption, the ATA/disk/whatever password has to be known to get at the encryption key, otherwise it's just left at some default that every machine can read.Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, June 17, 2014 - link
Hardware encryption means that the encryption is done by the hardware rather than software. The benefit is that because it's done at the device-level, it doesn't consume the host CPU like software encryption and it's more secure.While SSDs often encrypt all data that is written to them, you still have to enable encryption from the host to ensure that the data can't be accessed by a third party. Otherwise the SSD think that any machine (and user) is allowed to access the data.
thomas-hrb - Monday, June 16, 2014 - link
Good point, personally encryption at the hardware level is not important to me. I find common sense and protection of property out weighs the continuous management overhead of encryption keys especially for a developer like me who regularly and repeatedly reformats partitions.Especially when working with cloudbased/corporate share online only storage. I do wonder however, I have a samsung 840 pro (256GIB version) I have 2 vertex4's (256 GiB version). I have on many occasions rebuilt/reformatted and transplanted my SSD's from one machine to the next. I don't know if I have to explicitly enable/disable the feature on the SSD, but IMHO, if I could easily read the SSD contents simply by moving it to another computer, then what ever encryption is on the drive is simply not effective.
chiechien - Tuesday, June 17, 2014 - link
The Samsung (and probably the Vertex) encrypts (just by the nature of how it works) everything that is written to the drive as a matter of course. Unless you set an ATA password in your BIOS, though, the password/encryption key/whatever is left 'blank' or default or whatever, so it is readable by any other motherboard. If you set an ATA password, though, that changes the encryption key, you will probably have to wipe the drive to enable it, and then the drive will not be readable in another system unless you also configure it for ATA passwords as well, and then type it in.hojnikb - Monday, June 16, 2014 - link
I wonder why Sandisk didn't went with marvel *89 controller ?