ATTO

ATTO's Disk Benchmark is a quick and easy freeware tool to measure drive performance across various transfer sizes.

ATTO Performance

The ATTO performance plot shows that small reads are slow but performance is reasonably stable for large transfers, albeit a little slower than the MX200.

AS-SSD

AS-SSD is another quick and free benchmark tool. It uses incompressible data for all of its tests, making it an easy way to keep an eye on which drives are relying on transparent data compression. The short duration of the test makes it a decent indicator of peak drive performance.

Incompressible Sequential Read PerformanceIncompressible Sequential Write Performance

AS-SSD shows the MX300 read speed as suffering slightly, but the (SLC cached) write speed as perfectly normal.

Idle Power Consumption

Since the ATSB tests based on real-world usage cut idle times short to 25ms, their power consumption scores paint an inaccurate picture of the relative suitability of drives for mobile use. During real-world client use, a solid state drive will spend far more time idle than actively processing commands. Our testbed doesn't support the deepest DevSlp power saving mode that SATA drives can implement, but we can measure the power usage in the intermediate slumber state where both the host and device ends of the SATA link enter a low-power state and the drive is free to engage its internal power savings measures.

We also report the drive's idle power consumption while the SATA link is active and not in any power saving state. Drives are required to be able to wake from the slumber state in under 10 milliseconds, but that still leaves plenty of room for them to add latency to a burst of I/O. Because of this, many desktops default to either not using SATA Aggressive Link Power Management (ALPM) at all or to only enable it partially without making use of the device-initiated power management (DIPM) capability. Additionally, SATA Hot-Swap is incompatible with the use of DIPM, so our SSD testbed usually has DIPM turned off during performance testing.

Idle Power Consumption (HIPM+DIPM)
Active Idle Power Consumption (No ALPM)

Marvell's latest controller allows for great slumber power savings, but Micron needs to work on improving active idle power draw.

Mixed Read/Write Performance Conclusions and Final Words
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  • fanofanand - Tuesday, June 14, 2016 - link

    Slower and more expensive than the competition. Bravo Micron/Intel! Bravo!
  • ddriver - Tuesday, June 14, 2016 - link

    They have no choice but to get realistic about the price.
  • TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, June 14, 2016 - link

    Other SSD manufacturers are living in la-la land then? Because other OEMS seem to have no trouble selling SSDs for less.
  • Arnulf - Tuesday, June 14, 2016 - link

    They should get realistic about their naming as well - this is clearly a BX300 ... Or perhaps a BX298.32, given more crappy performance considering the BX100 ...
  • Oxford Guy - Friday, July 8, 2016 - link

    The drive beats the 850 EVO in the power consumption (except idle) tests, though. So, if the drive is going to be used in a laptop that doesn't idle much it could be a potential choice over the Samsung based on that.
  • barleyguy - Tuesday, June 14, 2016 - link

    I was hoping it would be faster than the MX200. I have 3 of those.

    It's top of the charts in power efficiency though, so it might be a great choice for a laptop. The performance difference is probably barely noticeable in real world use, but the battery life advantage might be tangible.

    Also, launch price is $199 for 750 GB, which is not bad at all.
  • chrisso - Friday, June 17, 2016 - link

    I also use an MX 200,which actually only has a write speed of 330.
    I suspect launch price is a suits guestimate at selling point.
    Real world differences are indeed minimal, price will be the main selling point later for the mainstream crowd (me).
  • chrisso - Friday, June 17, 2016 - link

    (my drive IS the humble 256 gig, btw). I would buy a 750 later as pointed out,prices are a tumbling.
  • eek2121 - Tuesday, June 14, 2016 - link

    Prices quoted are MSRP, as an example, the Trion 150 listed above debuted at 38.5 cents per gb. Don't be surprised to see this drive drop below 20 cents a gig in a few months.
  • Gondalf - Wednesday, June 15, 2016 - link

    Strange comment. Anandtech article is not negative at all about this SSD driver, Techreport too says "recommended" at the end of the review.
    So you are a little biased in my opinion.

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