MTRON 64GB MSD-SATA3035 Norfolk VA

The MTRON, as well as sounding like an accessory Optimus Prime may keep in its back pocket, is the only 3.5in flash drive in this Labs test, most of the rest being 2.5in drives. As it's roughly the same size as a standard hard drive, it's easy to install in any desktop PC. The stated read and write speeds of its SLC NAND flash memory are 100MB/sec and 80MB/sec respectively.




These figures are a little disappointing, though, as they're only slightly faster than modern hard drives, such as the 1TB Samsung SpinPoint F1. Unfortunately, it was one of the worst-performing drives, and was toppled by the considerably cheaper and larger Samsung F1 in several tests. For example, it took an abysmal 52 seconds to complete the search test, which is three times slower than the Samsung F1, while in HD Tach 3 RW, it was 14MB/sec slower at reading and 30MB/sec slower at writing. It performed better in the other tests, keeping pace with most of the other SSDs when loading Crysis, which it managed to do in 24 seconds, while the Samsung F1 took 30 seconds. It was also slightly faster in the multitasking test, but slower in the GIMP image editing test.




Overall, the MTRON is a disappointing flash drive. It retails at a considerably higher price than the Intel 80GB X25-M, but it's considerably slower. In fact, if you paid nearly £700 for this SSD without knowing how poorly it performs, you might be put off flash drives altogether. Given its outrageous price of £669, small capacity and mediocre performance, this drive is everything that an SSD shouldn't be. Its only redeeming feature is its low power consumption. However, as its 3.5in size means that it's incompatible with laptops, where its low power consumption would be welcome, this is rather a moot point.

Author: James Gorbold & Antony Leather

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