Solid State drives are what the enthusiast market wants for storage. This has been the case since the first SSDs hit the market a few years ago. However, the drives were too expensive for most and ended up being available to very few. In the last year or so the price per Gigabyte has dropped to almost $1 making the SSD a more viable option for not only the enthusiast but also for the regular consumer market. Additionally with the introduction of high-performance, low cost SATA 3.0 Controllers for SSDs the performance of these drives has made them almost too good to pass up. As far as completion and variety the SSD market is also better now than the traditional magnetic media market. There are simply more companies making SSDs than there are making HDD. We have already taken a look at a few of these in the past and are now working into the new line of SATA 3.0 drives complete with the SandForce 2281 SATA 3.0 controller. Today we have one from Patriot Memory, the PyroSE 120GB solid state drive. Let’s see just how fast it is.
Value - Value is another very subjective topic. What is expensive to some might be a deal to others. You can look at this topic in multiple ways. One is raw price and the other is what you get for the money. Each is accurate and both are correct ways to look at price/value. We tend to look at features, performance and real-property when we discuss value. However, we also take into account the raw cash cost of the item. The standalone Patriot PyroSE will run you about $150 from Newegg.com or another etailer. This is a good price for this drive considering the performance, but the fact that it is missing a drive adapter is a little frustrating and brings the overall value down a little. There are too many cases that still do not have spots for 2.5-inch drives not to include a tray these days. Conclusion - What can we say about the PyroSE that we have not already commented about. It is a very fast drive and will take care of your data. The inclusion of the SandForce controller (possibly the best on the market) makes it attractive as does the use of the Micron 25-nm MLC NAND Synchronous flash memory. The $150 price tag is great, although we truly wish Patriot had included a 3.5-inch adapter tray. We will not hold that against them though especially considering the performance that we got. The Patriot PyroSE 2.5-inch 120GB SSD has met all the requirements to earn our Gold Key Award with its performance and price point.Discuss this in our Forum
