Intel Optane SSD 800P 58GB M.2 PCIe SSD Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing and Availability

As this review is written before the release and published at the same time as the drive will be announced, we only have the suggested retail price and not actual listings. For $129 USD you’ll get this 58GB version while the larger 118GB will cost you $199 USD.

Conclusion

Intel Optane SSDs are in a league of their own, there can no longer be any doubt about that. The 3D XPoint NAND delivers a performance which other types of NAND simply can’t. Small SSDs usually tend to be somewhat bad when it comes to performance as there’s simply too little capacity to play around with for the firmware. That’s not the case with Optane SSDs such as the 800P that I’ve tested today. Even with as small a capacity as 58GB, the drive delivers impressive results. Not only that, it does so consistently across fillage scenarios and over time. It isn’t just that it is fast either, it’s also extremely responsive through low latencies.

Intel built an amazing product here that delivers where it matters. And while the capacity isn’t large, I’m sure it will become extremely popular among enthusiasts who want a fast boot drive as well as ordinary users purchasing pre-built systems with the drive integrated. Because we will see that, there is no doubt. Ultrabooks and similar small form factor devices, as well as netbooks which generally have low local storage capacity, will both benefit greatly from this drive. Quick boot times and fast loading times are a clear result and who doesn’t want that. Especially when we look at the real-work tests from PC Mark’s storage benchmark, the strengths become clear.

On top of the great performance, the drive is highly compatible. The system it is installed in will see it as any other PCIe-based SSD. The 2280 form factor and single-sided design also make it compatible with most systems. The drive also scales extremely well in RAID setups with over double the performance of a single drive, but we’ll get into that in a separate review very soon.

You might pay a little more for this drive than you would for any other SSD with the same capacity, but it’s definitely worth the extra. I’m thoroughly impressed.

Pros

• Low latency
• Great performance
• Compatible with close to any modern system
• Consistent performance across all fillage scenarios and conditioning
• Built to scale well in RAID

Cons

• Higher price than normal NAND drives
• Low capacity options when compared to other drives

“You might pay a little more for this drive than you would for any other SSD with the same capacity, but it’s definitely worth the extra. I’m thoroughly impressed.”

We would like to thank Intel for this sample.