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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KAlmquist - Tuesday, August 5, 2014 - link
Back in the days of the JMF602 controller, I thought about buying one to store program files on (meaning I would be doing pretty much nothing but reads on the device and the write problem wouldn't matter). But the prices on the JMF602 drives never dropped to the point where this made sense. I eventually bought an Indilinx drive for about the same price as a J-Micron drive.It seems like history is repeating itself.
Per Hansson - Wednesday, August 6, 2014 - link
You should be very glad you did not.I bought a 32GB JMF602B based Transcend TS32GSSD25S-M SSD in April 2008.
This was before even the first Intel X25-M 50nm SSD was released so there was not much on the market to choose from if you wanted a "cheap" SSD
Mind you cheap in this case was actually 1495SEK which translates to over $200!
Performance is appalling, this is the type of SSD which you could not install Windows Vista or 7 on, because you would get "delayed write failed" errors during the installation, the SSD was simply so slow that the installation program timed out when copying the files...
I'm using it for a Linux based firewall, IPCOP which is a 40MB ISO install, it took over 30 minutes to install!
With a 2GB SCSI disk the same install is over in under 5 minutes, just for reference!
Initially I gave this SSD a 2/10 score, because for my use it worked fine and I had not had any problems with it.
But now just last week when rebooting the machine the vmlinuz boot file in /boot was corrupted.
I can only conclude that the SSD has not refreshed the data in flash and that some bit flips has occurred, I made a HEX comparison of the file with a known good one and there where 4 errors in the file.
Restoring the file from the original ISO made the system able to boot again, but it just goes to show what amazing crap this company makes!
I sure would not take the bet that they have learnt anything in the last 5 years, especially so when they are probably using the crappiest flash they can find to get the price down, which they obviously have failed at when the MX100 is cheaper & performs miles better!
KAlmquist - Wednesday, August 6, 2014 - link
That drive sounds bad. Even if one were to excuse Transcend for not refreshing the flash, the drive still should have detected the data corruption.TonyCL6 - Thursday, August 7, 2014 - link
For a SSD controller to be able to make crappiest flash a working SSD requires strong R&D capability in both hardware and firmware. That is the Midas touch solution/ technology that flash memory vendors and module makers are eager to have.henrykale - Wednesday, August 6, 2014 - link
It's an easy call to start promoting video testimonials with Modulates, then you can publish them to Facebook or your website or Twitter.GraphicDesign - Thursday, August 7, 2014 - link
May be this is a great notebook for me to work in my website. I 'm adding new designs, I like to work in photoshop cs, indesign, illustrator cs6. Please suggest me if this is perfect for my design profession. You can contact me www [dot] tunaman [dot] me. In my website you will find lots of Graphic design tutorial. Thank you!cklee16 - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
Any idea if the updated firmware improved the performance of this drive?-K