Mushkin Reactor 1TB SSD Review
by Kristian Vättö on February 9, 2015 11:32 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
- SSDs
- Mushkin
- Silicon Motion
- SM2246EN
- Reactor
- Micron 16nm
Final Words
The more SM2246EN based SSDs I review, the more I'm convinced that Silicon Motion is becoming a very serious player in the controller market. Despite the use of 16nm NAND, the Reactor is an excellent performer and it also proves that the SM2246EN can handle 1TB of NAND without a hitch (whereas some controllers struggle with high capacities). The power efficiency is also great thanks to slumber power support, making the Reactor a viable option for laptops as well (which was a concern I had with the Transcend SSD370 that we reviewed last week).
My biggest criticism is the fact that Mushkin doesn't offer any lower capacities. In the end, a 1TB SSD will still set you back by over $350, which is why the majority of people are more interested in 128-512GB SSDs. As I mentioned on the introduction page, I suspect this has to do with the limited availability of Micron's 16nm NAND, but once the supply gets better Mushkin should have no problems bringing additional capacities to the market. On the other hand, the 1TB-class SSD market certainly needs more players because there aren't that many models available and only a couple that are value-oriented, so I'm also happy to see that Mushin chose a segment that isn't too crowded yet.
Furthermore, the lack of hardware encryption (TCG Opal 2.0 & eDrive) and software toolbox are also notable shortcomings, but neither of these is critical. Hardware encryption isn't very widely used among consumers due to the lack of freeware software and education, so especially for a value drive like the Reactor it's not a very big deal. As for the toolbox, I would certainly like to see one as it offers the end-user an easy way to monitor the drive, but most of the toolbox functionality can be replaced by freeware software if needed.
| Amazon Price Comparison (2/9/2015) | |
| 960GB/1TB | |
| Mushkin Reactor | $390 |
| Transcend SSD370 | $400 |
| Samsung SSD 850 EVO | $390 |
| Samsung SSD 850 Pro | $610 |
| SanDisk Extreme Pro | $479 |
| SanDisk Ultra II | $390 |
The pricing of the Reactor is very competitive. It's among the cheapest 1TB-class SSDs around, although right now there are two other SSDs (850 EVO & Ultra II) that are priced exactly the same. Out of these three, the 850 EVO would be my number one pick because it's the fastest and has by far the most extensive feature set, but in the past it has been retailing for around $450. I'm not sure whether the current price is due to a sale or if it's a permanent change, but in any case it's the best 1TB SSD deal around at the moment. That said, if the price of the 850 EVO goes up to $450 again, the Reactor will become a better choice because despite the performance and features I don't find the 850 EVO to be worth $60 more.
Either way, the Reactor is without a doubt one of the best value 1TB SSDs around and deserves a recommendation from us. Its performance is good regardless of how intensive the workload is and the performance doesn't come at the cost of power efficiency. To be frank, if I was on a lookout for an affordable 1TB SSD, the Reactor would be one of the first drives I would look at.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
69 Comments
View All Comments
nandnandnand - Monday, February 9, 2015 - link
I get excited over Samsung/V-NAND SSD reviews. But it hasn't resulted in a steep price drop yetUplink10 - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
That is because SSD`s are overpriced and people should avoid buying them because they are only giving fuel to greedy companies. I am still using 2.5" HDD in my laptop.Kristian Vättö - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
The goal of a company is to generate profit for its shareholders, not to give away free stuff to random consumers. HDD companies aren't any different, the flood case is a good example of their greed.Uplink10 - Thursday, February 12, 2015 - link
Yes but here we have a choice, if you aren`t intensive (power) user I suggest you stick to HDD for a while, while SSD`s lose price. But if you are power user and need SSD for virtualization (I try to hold back from buying one) I guess you should buy the cheapest one one there is (MX100) because if you really think about costlier SSD`s, Samsung 850 Pro is enterprise and 850 Evo is a consumer disc. Will you really have an SDD 10 years in a PC, probably not.eanazag - Monday, February 9, 2015 - link
I won't get excited again until NVMe/SATA Express starts to really take flight. I looked through the article just so I know the pitfalls of the drive and the controller. 450MB-550MBps speed drives are all over the place. Differentiation has to come from somewhere else.Calista - Tuesday, February 10, 2015 - link
Has it not more to do with the quick improvement of SSD drives which have removed one of the biggest bottlenecks, leaving the rest of the components to play catch-up. To explain, for literally 99.9 percent of computer users any half-decent SSD is more than speedy enough. Not so with any other component. A basic CPU will create situations with slowdowns from time to time, a basic GPU will prevent most modern games from running even if we drop the resolution and quality a lot, a basic WiFi chip will take a lot of time for basic operations, like say copying a gig of data.But for most people most of the time the slowdown caused by a slow SSD will be in the seconds range, i.e. Word may take 3 instead of 1 second to start, to reboot will take 20 instead of 10 seconds. Yeah, it all add up. But it's still just a few extra seconds during a normal day. Using an old Latitude E4200 its SSD drive is really slow by todays standards, like r/w performance in the 80-100 MB/s range. But while it feels slower than say my Samsung 840 it's really not that big of a difference, this despite the latter being like five times as fast.
antialienado - Tuesday, February 10, 2015 - link
Somebody needs to test, so we know for good what is the best choice.But you are right. This is getting boring.
It would be more interesting if Anadtech were testing the drives in the various RAID available, including the cheapest ones.
I have an X58 system. It only supports SATA II.
I would like to know the difference in performance between a BIOS RAID 0, a SATA 3 expansion card, a PCI-E SSD, and have it in a XY chart of performance vs cost.
That would be far more interesting and useful.
Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, February 10, 2015 - link
Currently we don't have the manpower to do that. I'm handling all SSDs on my own and I already have more drives to review than I can possibly do. The topics you mentioned are all interesting, but require a lot of work because it's not enough to test just one motherboard/chipset and SATA 6Gbps expansion card. Once you start including a handful of each the workload increases exponentially and the testing alone would take a couple of weeks, assuming there are no issues.I agree that the current state of SSD market isn't all that interesting but trust me, it's going to get a lot more interesting in H2 when PCIe and NVMe make a big entry to the market.
HisDivineOrder - Tuesday, February 10, 2015 - link
SSD's are boring because the best and worst SSD's are miles ahead of HD's in terms of the experience provided.The most important factor with a SSD is PRICE AND/OR SIZE (but definitely not speed) followed by warranty.
That's why companies continue to slowly get dragged down to where pricing should have been FIVE years ago.
Uplink10 - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
I it hate when new technologies are overpriced. Same thing is happening with BD-R blank discs, they are costlier in terms of capacity/price than HDDs.