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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
57 Comments
View All Comments
hojnikb - Monday, August 4, 2014 - link
Could it be possible to flash newer refrence firmware to it ?I know this have been done in the past, because i've flashed my Crucial V4 with newer firmware that crucial offered. I wonder if its the same with Jmicron
solnyshok - Monday, August 4, 2014 - link
Whenever I read about slow ssd, I wonder if "the one" that I need is going to happen. If manufacturers read this - here is the niche for HTPC. I need a silent movie/torrent storage. 1TB at $200-250 would be a good start. Performance/power saving aren't that important, as long as it can sustatin 130MB/s sequential read/write (bottleneck of home gigabit network) and 10,000+ iops (to avoid jerkiness of video playback during concurrent torrent seeding)ddriver - Monday, August 4, 2014 - link
Most HDDs do 130 MB already. You can avoid "jerkiness" by tweaking buffering/caching for playback and torrents respectively.leexgx - Tuesday, August 5, 2014 - link
can you fix the Crucial MX100 OP results and lower the IOPS to to 30kas the Crucial MX100 is doing some very odd results on the 25% OP 32QD 4K Write (the last one seems an error doing 60k IOPS as its way past 50K on that last test) 412GB is making the charts go to 50k when most do not pass 25k
leexgx - Tuesday, August 5, 2014 - link
4K random Write 32Q 25% OP Crucial MX100solnyshok - Tuesday, August 5, 2014 - link
Thanks for all replies, I already have SSD (256GB 840EVO+2TB 2.5"HDD) combo in my htpc. I just wanted to go totally silent. My point was that somebody needs to pack 1TB of the cheapest flash on the cheapest controller for the lowest $/GB ratio. I appreciate replies about price-o-nomics of ssd making. If it is not feasible, oh, well, I can wait couple of years.MrSpadge - Monday, August 4, 2014 - link
You hardly gain any cost benefit by making SSDs slow. That's why you don't see the value drives you're looking for. Sounds like a 5x00 rpm HDD together with some small to medium sized SSD for the torrents is your best solution. Assuming you don't offer your entire movie collection for torrenting, of course.hojnikb - Monday, August 4, 2014 - link
If you tune your torrent client right, ANY 5400rpm hdd will be just fine. I know, because i'm using an old 2.5" drive in my nas and can do multiple torrents AND streaming with ease. Its just the right tuning.wolrah - Monday, August 4, 2014 - link
It's not even tuning, just keeping preallocation on and keeping fragmentation down is enough.solnyshok - Tuesday, August 5, 2014 - link
Thanks, if that's the case, I just need to wait a bit (3 years?), until 1TB becomes cheap