SanDisk has expanded its retail SSD portfolio and made a foray into the portable SSD market with a range of new product launches at the event held on August 25, 2015 in India. Speaking at the event, Mr. Rajesh Gupta, Country Manager India and SAARC for SanDisk Corporation spoke about the performance boost it offered to a large segment of consumers ranging from regular home users to gamers to photographers, videographers and creative professionals. He also elaborated on SanDisk’s innovative new offerings in the External Storage segment, though these are of little use to gamers.
The products that were launched included the Extreme 900 and Extreme 500 portable SSDs that use USB 3 for fast transfer speeds with the 900 also including the new USB C type port. Then there were the entry level SSD Plus range available in 120GB and 240GB capacities, the mid-range Ultra II based on X3 NAND Flash technology, available in both 2.5” SATA3 and mSATA form factors. Finally, there’s the Extreme Pro series that’s targeted at Gamers and enthusiasts that goes up to 1TB capacity.
In terms of performance, while the entry-level drives have read speeds up to 520MB/s the higher-level products have read speeds of up to 550MB/s and write speeds of up to 520MB/s. Of the portable products the 900 series has read speeds of up to 850MB/s in capacities up to 1.92TB while the 500 series has speeds up to 415MB/s with capacities up to 480GB. Of course, we will deliver our verdict on these offerings only after we have tested them ourselves.
SanDisk has an image as a maker of reliable flash storage products in the portable space, so the reception by Gamers to their SSD offerings could be skewed because of that. At the event, we were only able to see demonstrations of copy tests and there wasn’t any gaming set up to our disappointment. We did ask for the pricing of various drives and SanDisk seems to be very competitive across all segments. While the portable drives are aimed at photographers, videographers and creative professions, we think they could make an interesting addition to your gaming laptop or gaming console. Until next time, iLL out.
