SanDisk Extreme Pro 480GB Solid State Drive Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

The Sandisk Extreme PRO 480GB solid state drive is widely available at the time of writing and can be had at most major retailers. As for price, Amazon has it listed in the UK for £220.94, in the US for $349.99 and in Germany for €272.83 , all three include free shipping and handling. While the drive might not be the cheapest on the list, it is definitely one of the fastest at that price. A purchase that no one would regret.

Overview

The SanDisk Extereme PRO 480GB was a pleasure to have on the test bench, though not very exciting. But don’t get me wrong, this wasn’t because the drive didn’t deliver, because it did. It wasn’t exciting because I couldn’t rattle this drive in any way. It just wouldn’t buckle and just kept on showing the same performance figures over and over. It didn’t matter how much I filled the drive or how much I conditioned it, it kept on running. Even after I was done with all of the benchmarks and the simulated workloads on the drive, it had 99% lifetime left according to the SanDisk SSD Dashboard. This is a fact SanDisk can be proud of.

The promised speeds of 550 MB/s read and 515 MB/s write were no problem to achieve on this drive and neither were the IOPS of 100K and 90K respectively. The nCache Pro technology used in this drive clearly shows what a difference it can make, and allows the drive to wear its Extreme PRO name with pride. While the drive didn’t achieve these figures in all tests, we need to keep in mind that advertised speeds are measured in ATTO, and it had no problem to reach them there. All other benchmark tests were very close to it and the Anvil Storage Test really showed how the drive stands out.

The accessories bundle isn’t big with the SanDisk Extreme PRO drive, but we still get everything we need and a little bit more. The addition of the 9 mm adapter bracket is a great thing to see for laptop users, though on the other hand they left out the 3½ inch adapter bracket for desktop users. The bonus the SanDisk SSD Dashboard gives, once downloaded and installed, further adds to the value of this drive. It should be noted at this point that the SSD Dashboard could be tricky in safe-mode due to it’s restricted and large window size. This might not be an issue most of the time, but if worst come worst and the system strikes, it’s nice to check up on how the system disk is doing.

The ten-year warranty period SanDisk offers on this drive is amazing and something unique in this market segment. With that amount of faith in the drive from the manufacturers side, we know we’re dealing with a grade A product. I can only agree to that, and while it didn’t land on the first place in the charts, I’ll still dare to claim this to be the fastest when all things are taken into consideration.

Pros:

• Sustained performance and speeds over the entire spectrum
• Longest available warranty in this market segment with 10 years
• 9 mm adapter bracket for laptop users
• Only 0.15 watt power consumption on this model
• Optimal cooling provided to all internal components

Cons:

• No native encryption features

Neutral:

• 3½ inch adapter bracket not included
• SSD Dashboard could be tricky in safe-mode, due to it’s large and restricted window size.

“If you plan on only buying one Solid State Drive over the next 10 year period, make it the SanDisk Extreme PRO. It will prove to be a great drive, all of the time, and with warranty to cover any worst-case-scenarios. The performance of this drive couldn’t be rattled by anything I threw at it.”

Thanks to SanDisk for providing this review sample.