So far, Transcend enjoyed only limited success in the solid state drive market, but recently the company decided to try its luck yet again with a new series of SATA 6Gbps SSDs based on SandForce’s second generation controllers.
The new drives were released in the SSD720 series and, initially, the range will comprise three models with capacities going from 64GB to 256GB, while using the standard 2.5-inch form factor characteristic to most notebooks.
At the heart of all the units stands the SandForce SF-2281 controller, which features native support for the SATA 6Gbps interface, as well as eight memory channels that are to be connected to NAND Flash memory chips.
No information regarding the type of NAND used in these solid state drives is available, but
Transcend has provided us with a series of performance numbers.
According to these details, the fastest drive in the series, the 256GB unit, is able to read data sequentially at speeds up to 550MB/s, while its sequential write performance is rated at 500MB/s.
Furthermore, Transcend also mentioned that the maximum 4K random write performance of the SSD720
SSDs should reach 85,000 IOPS (input/output operations per second).
As always, performance varies depending on the capacity of the drive, since the 64GB and 128GB models don’t have all the eight NAND Flash channels available in the controller populated with memory chips.
Like all the other
SandForce SF-2200 based drives available out there, the SSD720 series includes the DuraClass and DuraWrite technologies, as well as full support for the TRIM command.
According to
Storage Review, Transcend SSD720 series solid state drives are available right now with prices starting at $149 (113 EUR) for the 64GB. The 128GB and 256GB models retail for $249 and $449 (189 and 342 EUR), respectively.
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