Toshiba TR200 SSD 960GB Review - Introduction

Toshiba TR200 960GB SSD
Value For Money @ 28 Cents Per GB

We review the latest storage incarnation from OCZ Toshiba, the Toshiba TR200 series SSDs, with the TR hinting towards Trion (from what previously was known as the artist called OCZ). This new model positions itself in a more entry level upwards to mainstream SSD segment fighting with the Samsung EVO series, Crucial BX300 and comparable SSDs in both price and performance. The new TR200 SSD series that is 100% Toshiba proprietary, that includes the controller and 15nm TLC (3-bit per cell) NAND flash memory. New is actual NAND type, it's 64-layer BiCS which means this SSD uses merely eight chips for an SSD that offers close to one Terabyte of storage volume!

Value for money wise you will receive a an SSD series that should be fast enough, won't break your wallet and comes with a good after-sales warranty program. You guys might have noticed a change in naming once again, Toshiba are now branding as Toshiba with OCZ product series. So vertex became VX and the Trion series now is referred to as TR series. In a storage world dominated by the big guns like Micron and Samsung, margins are getting smaller and smaller. Toshiba needed to address that to get the price per gigabyte down and offer a competitive solution that is fast, will be excellent in any PC and obviously a product that can compete with the Samsungs EVO and Crucial BX series in both price and performance. To do so they are using an in-house Toshiba controller that steers all new 15nm TLC based Toshiba 64-layer NAND flash memory. The Toshiba OCZ TR200  series is obviously SATA 6Gb/s based and comes with read performance of up-to 550MB/s and a peak write performance of 540MB/s with IOPS 4K read/write: 81k/88k. These 960GB SSDs are rated at 240TB (depending on volume size) written during the 3-year warranty period. The new Toshiba TR200 series once again offers improved power efficiency, 1.6W when active and less than 5mW when it's sleeping, these are impressive values so you could consider using this puppy in a laptop as well.

Toshiba announces the 960GB version today, but will launch more models like the 240, 480 and thus the 960GB versions. Endurance is another factor alongside reliability. In today's review for example we'll look at the product and see how fast it remains even after thrashing the SSD with over 3TB host writes written. The Toshiba OCZ TR200 isn't shy with writing either, this SSD series is rated at 240 TB written for five years for the 960GB model.

The TR200 breaks down that price even more at just under 30 cents per GB for the 960GB model. The specs are nice enough by any standard. The models have sustained read levels of close to 550 MB/sec and up-to 540 MB/sec respectively. Have a peek first, after which we'll dive into the technology behind it and obviously we'll present you a nice phat performance overview.