SanDisk Ultra Plus 256GB SSD Review

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by Robert Tanner on July 29, 2013 in Storage

Enthusiast SSDs may get all of the fame and glory, but it’s the value brands that always sell the most drives. As a relative newcomer that doesn’t rely on SandForce controllers like many other vendors do, can SanDisk’s Marvell-equipped Ultra Plus deliver that “Ultra” good value we’re looking for?

Page 5 – Synthetic: AS SSD

As the name implies, AS SSD is a nifty little program written exclusively for solid-state drives. It can still be run on a mechanical hard drive just for fun, but be warned: what takes a few minutes on an SSD will require the better part of an hour on an HDD! It is freely available for download here.

This handy tool measures sequential reads and writes in addition to the important 4KB random reads and writes, then ranks the results with a final score for quick comparison with other SSDs. In addition to the main test there is a secondary benchmark that simulates the type of data transferred for ISO, Program, and Game files. We selected this program for its precision, ability to generate large file sizes on-the-fly, and because it is written to bypass Windows 7’s automatic caching system.

Once again, the Ultra Plus performs well. Read performance is strong in both sequential and random 4KB operations. In the write tests the SSD takes third spot sequentially, but gives up a little ground in the 4KB tests. Access latency is looking great as well, with both read and write results below the 0.1ms mark.

In the data transfer tests SanDisk’s drive takes second in both the ISO and Game categories and fourth in the program test out of our ten data samples. The final AS SSD score is based purely on the Read and Write results, and for an affordable model SSD, the Ultra Plus slots in a very respectable fourth place overall with strong read performance.

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