Transcend SSD340 (256GB) Review
by Kristian Vättö on August 4, 2014 5:00 AM ESTFinal Words
From a performance perspective, the SSD340 leaves a lot to be desired. It is the slowest SSD in our 2013 Storage Bench and the IO consistency is also quite horrible compared to the competition. I have to wonder why Transcend is not utilizing the newer firmware from JMicron because the reference design SSD with Intel's 128Gbit 20nm NAND is much faster than the SSD340 is. It is certainly possible that Transcend is using lower grade NAND to cut costs, which would explain the lower performance, but I find it hard to believe that the NAND alone would result in up to 35% decrease in performance.
| Amazon Price Comparison (7/31/2014) | ||||
| 64GB | 120/128GB | 240/256GB | ||
| Transcend SSD340 | $55 | $70 | $115 | |
| ADATA Premier Pro SP920 | - | $75 | $130 | |
| ADATA Premier SP610 | - | $70 | $120 | |
| SanDisk Ultra Plus | - | $70 | $110 | |
| Crucial MX100 | - | $75 | $110 | |
| Plextor M6S | - | $80 | $132 | |
| Intel SSD 530 | - | $82 | $160 | |
| OCZ Vertex 460 | - | $90 | $140 | |
| Samsung SSD 840 EVO | - | $90 | $140 | |
Ultimately it all boils down to price and that is where the SSD340 fails to set itself apart from the competition. The SSD340 is definitely one of the cheapest SSDs around but the competition can provide a much better feature set and performance at a similar price. For the price of the SSD340, you can get ADATA Premier SP610, SanDisk Ultra Plus or Crucial MX100 – all of which are better picks than the SSD340. The only advantage that the SSD340 has is the 64GB model that most manufacturers no longer offer, but I would strongly recommend spending $15-20 more to get twice the capacity and a better SSD (e.g. the MX100).
All in all, the SSD340 is a rather unimpressive drive. At $50 for 128GB and $90 for 256GB, it might be a good option for buyers that have a very tight budget, but at the current prices the SSD340 just does not make any sense. You are much better off with the Crucial MX100 or ADATA Premier SP610 at the same price.
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TonyCL6 - Wednesday, August 6, 2014 - link
SSD370 should be pretty much the same as AData SP610 because of the controller and NAND configuration.Per Hansson - Monday, August 4, 2014 - link
The more things change the more they stay the same seems a fitting quote for this Transcend's SSD endeavors!homerdog - Monday, August 4, 2014 - link
Unless these drives fall way down the price ladder, there simply no reason for them to exist.MadMan007 - Monday, August 4, 2014 - link
Is there any budget SSD that makes sense in a world where the MX100 exists?Samus - Monday, August 4, 2014 - link
This drive (and this company) is completely irrelevant. I don't get why anybody would buy a drive outside of the Crucial/Micron/Intel/Samsung/Toshiba/Sandisk circle.Kingston, ADATA, Transcend, OWC, Mushkin, Corsair, and so on, make no compelling products and can't compete with Sandisk/Crucial on price because they don't make their own memory, controllers, or both.
hojnikb - Tuesday, August 5, 2014 - link
Pretty much. Unless you're owning a fab it's pretty hard to compete price wise.TonyCL6 - Wednesday, August 6, 2014 - link
Frankly for consumer market, only Samsung and maybe Toshiba has its own SSD controllers. The rest are now mainly using Marvell solutions. Kingston, ADATA, Transcend, OWC, Mushkin, Corsair and so on help Micron(Intel) and Toshiba(Sandisk) a lot to support/ consume their NAND Flash capacity. If they all gone, I personally don't think that would do any good to end-users. You can easily tell from how Samsung sells TLC and VNAND products. The cost of NAND is way much cheaper but that never reflects on the selling price.l_d_allan - Tuesday, August 5, 2014 - link
As Butch Cassidy said, "Don't sugar-coat it" :-)StrangerGuy - Tuesday, August 5, 2014 - link
Anandtech should just probably come blunt and say "If you can't beat the MX100 in price/performance/reliability don't even THINK about selling consumer SSDs thank you very much"Readers that visit this site ain't fooled no matter how much ads or exposure that comes down our throats.
hojnikb - Tuesday, August 5, 2014 - link
But its true. Why buy a turd, if you can speds a few extra bucks and get a proper drive.