14 DAY TRIAL // As far as solid-state drives go, pretty much every storage device maker out there has one or more up for sale, and at least as many in the pipeline. Corsair is, of course, one of the main promoters.
In fact, Corsair is part of the company group that forced the hands of Seagate and Western Digital into joining the SSD industry themselves.
Since hard drives don't cut it anymore, SSDs have ascended through the ranks quite fast. Sure, they're expensive and have less storage space, but that's not a problem for high-end consumers and business clients.
And with Corsair known for making money despite mostly focusing on the high-end front, it's no shock to see the Force LS series of SSDs out.
This line of solid-state storage units is actually a bit faster than most high-end drives made of NAND chips.
Sure, the 535 MB/s sequential write speed is a tad below what we've seen in the past (540 MB/s on high-capacity models), but 560 MB/s for reading is more than even the “common” 550/555 MB/s.
The SATA 6.0 Gbps connection interface allows for such transfer rates, but it is the Phison controller that actually pushes data so fast.
That's right, this isn't one of those storage devices that use a SandForce/LSI controller processor. It turns out that Phison can compete just fine on the peak level of this industry segment.
That said, the new Force LS drives aren't so unusual in other respects. They use the normal 2.5-inch form factor and have a thickness of 7mm, not 5mm or less.
TRIM is supported, as expected. This being the Windows technology that constantly clears up deleted sectors, maintaining the write cycle level and preserving performance over time.
All in all, for MLC (multi-level cell) NAND Flash memory products, the Corsair Force LS series aren't too shabby. Their capacities are of 60 GB, 120 GB and 240 GB, and their prices are of $70 / €52 (€70 if exchange rates turn out as irrelevant as they usually do in these cases), $110 / €82 - €110, and $200 / €150 – €200, respectively.