Editorial Team

We have our first retail SSD with JMicron's JMF667H controller. Paying $115 for 256 GB of fast storage sure sounds attractive, but has the company ironed out the issues that plagued it in the early days of SSDs? We run its SSD340 through our grinder.

It's rare that we get the chance to test SSDs before they hit production. But after waltzing with Silicon Motion's SM2246EN platform last year, JMicron offered us a handful of reference drives with different types of flash, all driven by the new JMF667H.

After winning an award last year for its 840 EVO, Samsung is ready to follow up with another high-end offering. The company's 850 Pro SSD merges the EVO's familiar MEX controller with 3D V-NAND. Does the combination justify an upgrade, or should you wait?

Z97 ushers in new and exciting ways to attach and use storage devices. With support for M.2 PCIe and SATA Express, two sides of the same SSD coin, Z97 improves on Z87. But not everywhere. AsRock add to Z97 with some new tricks, and so we take a look.

Plextor's next-gen M6e is a M.2 2280 PCIe SSD combined with a x4 PCIe adapter. You probably don't have a M.2 PCIe slot yet, but Plextor hopes their Marvell 9183 powered SSD will find a home in enthusiast systems thanks to their adapter.

Plextor is launching two new SSDs under its M6 banner. The M6S and M6M lean on Toshiba's A19 flash and Marvell's updated 9188 silicon. Together, both components (plus some custom firmware work) should augment value and speed in a couple of form factors.

Adata shifts away from SandForce in its Premier Pro SP920 SSD family. With promises of incredible performance and spiffy features like DevSlp, Adata's latest employs the Marvell controller we saw in Crucial's M550. But the two share quite a bit more...

Crucial's M500 brought mainstream performance, enhanced features, and rock-bottom pricing together in one of the most-recommended SSDs of 2013. Following up, Crucial has a refined version called the M550, juiced-up for performance-hungry enthusiasts.

Once upon a time, adopting mSATA-based storage meant compromising capacity and performance. With its 840 EVO, Samsung gives you access to as much as 1000 GB at incredibly fast speeds. The company even manages attractive pricing to keep mSATA competitive.

SanDisk's X210 SSD is both an OEM drive for major vendors and an aftermarket product for the enthusiast world. Having passed a gauntlet of validation tests, can it break into the consumer space as a true alternative to the quickest power user products?

OCZ is re-launching its flagship consumer SSD as the Vector 150. Armed with 19 nm Toggle-mode flash and new encryption functionality, this new drive is purported to be the pinnacle of of enthusiast-class solid-state storage. Does it live up to the hype?

Intel recently lifted the veil on a replacement for its SSD 520, not surprisingly called the SSD 530. It partners new SandForce silicon with IMFT's 20 nm flash for better power consumption and a more modest price tag. Does the evolution pay off?

Intel lent us six SSD DC S3500 drives with its home-brewed 6 Gb/s SATA controller inside. We match them up to the Z87/C226 chipset's six corresponding ports, a handful of software-based RAID modes, and two operating systems to test their performance.

We got our hands on an early sample of SanDisk's A110 SSD. So what? Big deal? Not a chance. This thing is PCI Express-attached and sports the new M.2 edge connector. Read on to learn more about the next generation of solid-state storage connectivity.

Silicon Motion already makes flash storage controllers in all shapes and sizes. Now, with a new SATA 6Gb/s processor ready for action, the Taiwanese firm is hoping to make a dent in the market share currently enjoyed by SandForce and Marvell.

Micron's consumer products division, Crucial, wasn't the first brand to introduce a 1 TB SSD. But it was the first to sell one for less than a fortune, and it sports some snazzy new features to boot. We got our hands on the entire line-up to test.

Last week, Samsung unveiled a successor to its wildly popular 840 at the company's Global SSD Summit in Seoul, South Korea. Stacked with a series of new features and 19 nm, three-bit-per-cell NAND, we benchmark four models and make a recommendation.

SanDisk's Ultra Plus replaces the company's older SATA 3Gb/s SandForce-based Ultra with something a bit more modern, and with a budget-oriented price tag. We test all three capacities to see if the entry-level pricing belies a pocket rocket in disguise.

SanDisk is looking for a rise to prominence in the SSD segment with a new Marvell 88SS9187-based drive. The Extreme II packs 19 nm Toggle-mode NAND (from SanDisk, naturally), specialized firmware, and intriguing performance potential. How does it compare?

OCZ is shaking up its current product stack by replacing the year-old Vertex 4 SSD. The Vertex 450 matches Barefoot 3 controller silicon with 20 nm synchronous NAND for something slightly more economical than the company's current flagship, the Vector.