SanDisk Ultra II (240GB) SSD Review
by Kristian Vättö on September 16, 2014 2:00 PM ESTFinal Words
Samsung set the bar for TLC SSDs extremely high with the SSD 840 and further raised it with the SSD 840 EVO. Since Samsung set the base level of what to expect from TLC, now every TLC drive will be put directly against Samsung's offerings, and what Samsung taught us is that a TLC SSD does not have to be inferior to an MLC drive. Coming up with something better than Samsung is a massive challenge because Samsung has more control over what they do than anyone else thanks to vertical integration.
If there is one company that has the resources to take on Samsung, that is SanDisk. Despite the pressure, the Ultra II meets the high expectations Samsung set for TLC SSDs. Saying that the Ultra II is faster than the 840 EVO would not be accurate since the two trade blows in our benchmarks, but the truth is that the Ultra II is a tough competitor to the 840 EVO. The same goes for the MX100 – the Ultra II goes head to head with it, and some benchmarks are in favor of the Ultra II while the MX100 excels in others.
There are only two minor shortcomings that I see in the Ultra II. The first one is peak performance, which is not on par with the MX100 and 840 EVO. For very light workloads (web browsing, email, Office, etc.) that is not a concern, but users with heavier workloads (though not heavy workloads, just something more than basic web browsing and email; e.g. gaming and photo editing) may get slightly better performance with the MX100 or 840 EVO.
The other is the lack of hardware encryption. Both the MX100 and 840 EVO support TCG Opal 2.0 and eDrive encryption, so the fact that the Ultra II does not have any form of encryption support cannot go without a mention. Whether that is valuable is totally up to you – eDrive has fairly strict software and hardware limitations and thus is not important for the majority of potential buyers, but if you plan on utilizing encryption now or sometime in the future it is better to go with a drive that has the proper hardware support.
| NewEgg Price Comparison (9/15/2014) | ||||
| 120/128GB | 240/256GB | 480/512GB | 960GB/1TB | |
| SanDisk Ultra II | $80 | $110 | $220 | $430 |
| SanDisk Extreme Pro | - | $190 | $370 | $590 |
| SanDisk Extreme II | $75 | $150 | $480 | - |
| Crucial MX100 | $75 | $112 | $210 | - |
| Crucial M550 | $90 | $155 | $280 | $470 |
| Samsung SSD 850 Pro | $130 | $210 | $400 | $700 |
| Samsung SSD 840 EVO | $90 | $150 | $250 | $460 |
| OCZ ARC 100 | $75 | $120 | $240 | - |
| Plextor M6S | $80 | $130 | $280 | - |
| Intel SSD 530 | $85 | $140 | $250 | - |
It is clear that SanDisk is going after the MX100 in pricing. The prices are within $10 of each other and due to normal price fluctuations the two will likely switch places on a regular basis. I am inclined to say that the MX100 is still a better buy because not only do you get hardware encryption, you also get higher usable capacities since the MX100 features less over-provisioning compared to the Ultra II (7% vs 13%), so technically the price per gigabyte is lower. Of course, even a small drop in the Ultra II's prices will render the difference negligible at which point it boils down to whether you value SanDisk's SSD Dashboard over the MX100's hardware encryption.
The SanDisk 960GB model, however, is an obvious case because the MX100 tops out at 512GB, so the Ultra II is the best available option (unless you need hardware encryption in which case it is worth it to spend a bit more on the 840 EVO).
All in all, it seems that SanDisk is finally becoming more aggressive on the retail frontier. SanDisk has always been a big name among the OEMs, but I have felt that their retail drives have been a bit like second class citizens. I mean, the Ultra Plus and Extreme II were both good SSDs, but SanDisk never pushed them to the full potential that the drives could have had in the market. But I see a change happening.
The goal of the Extreme Pro was to be the fastest client SATA drive on the market, and it succeeded in that (before the 850 Pro came out, although the two are very close), plus the pricing was fair. With the Ultra II, SanDisk finally has a value drive that is competitive in both price and performance. I am glad that SanDisk is showing more commitment to the retail space because if there is one company that can challenge Samsung and Micron in all aspects, that is SanDisk.
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coder111 - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link
I think we can safely assume any off the shelf/factory based hardware encryption has backdoors by NSA/GCHQ or Chineese intelligence or whoever. So it doesn't protect from governments nor government sponsored industrial espionage. In the best case it protects from information leaks in case of casual theft. At worst, it gives a false sense of security.I would never rely on anything except open-source encryption where the source is continuously being reviewed. And even that is can be compromised by introducing hard to detect bugs.
So I don't think hardware encryption support adds much value if any.
jabber - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
Can we just cut the reviews for SATA based SSDs down purely to "What makes this SSD radically different to 99% of the similar performing SSDs out there"? Would just save a bit of time that's all. SSDs are now like RAM, all much of a muchness and we just need to know the bells and whistles if any.Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
SSDs are way different than RAM is. RAM is managed by a controller that is integrated to the CPU, so the DRAM you buy is basically a bunch of dummy silicon with no logic in itself. If SSDs were just a stick of NAND, then you would be correct, but the truth is that SSDs have a controller and firmware, which makes one SSD different from the other. In addition, NAND is much more complex to manage compared to DRAM because you have all sorts of limitations (page is the minimum write and you can only erase blocks etc.), so there is much more to it than with RAM, which is basically just differently binned pieces of DRAM silicon.We could drop all component reviews if we took your mindset because current computers can do pretty much everything that average users want them to do. However, the fact is that there are people who are interested in the details and how things work, and there are people who do more than just web browsing and email, so that is where detailed reviews are needed.
Powerlurker - Sunday, September 21, 2014 - link
StorageReview basically stopped reviewing consumer-grade drives for most second and third tier manufacturers because they got tired of writing reviews that said, "Yep, it's another Sandforce reference design, and it pretty much performs the same as all the others."milli - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
I feel that Anand is praising the MX100 just a little bit too much. I had to first hand experience that it's not that good (even for a budget drive). Those bad service times you measure on the MX100 are really noticable in real life usage.In my case, five identical i5 machines. Four with 256GB MX100 drives. One with a PNY 240GB Optima (was even cheaper than the MX100). During heavy work, the machine with the Optima was clearly snappier. And I don't mean I measured higher MB/s but snappier. Everything you open just starts to happen/load a little sooner.
This shows that your reviews for low-end consumer SSDs are too workstation/server minded. The fact that the MX100 start being faster than the Ultra II after a barrage of 10GB of random data, means basically nothing for a casual desktop user. The usual desktop usage is small burst of data. Lots of idle time. You want those burst to happen/start fast.
You keep pushing encryption as a pro (and it is one) but keep in mind that probably less than 1% of people actually use it.
My advice? Both the M500 and MX100 are laggy. Drives with Phison controllers are laggy. Transcend SSD 340 (JMicron) felt laggy like the M500.
PNY Optima didn't feel laggy. Sandisk Ultra Plus didn't feel too laggy either (not perfect though).
I'm eager to test the Ultra II and the Hynix SH910A (because the Neutron felt so smooth).
I don't know how you're going to measure this through benchmarks (well the service time one seems to show it) but my brain surely is perceptible to this.
hojnikb - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
I smell bullshit or defective drives. There is no way, mx100 or m500 for that matter would fell as laggy as phison or jmicron for that matter. Both of those controllers are far inferior to marvell offering. In fact, some older jmicrons and phisons are so bad, that it doesn't even take a heavy user to notice the difference or lag.milli - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
Yes, true. I've got dozens of broken drives. ;) Seriously, no bullshit.Obviously I'm talking about drives with JMicron and Phison controllers from 2014 and not the older ones.
Also with laggy I don't mean that I'm waiting seconds, right! As an enthusiast and professional of plus 20 years, a couple fractions of a second make them feel more laggy to me.
hojnikb - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
Well, considering the workload you have, why didn't you go with more expensive drives in the first place ?I mean, those drives are not exactly meant for heavy work you're describing.
MrSpadge - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
If one of them does it significantly better than the others, that's something worth noting. Especially if it doesn't show in the benchmarks we're used to looking at.milli - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
Very true what you say but the clients these machines are meant for, use it for light usage. It's only during preparation of these machines that I notice the differences. The only reason I used the MX100, is because of Anand's recommendation. At first I was skeptical about it because of the M500. It seems that skepticism was just. There are better client usage cheap drives out there.