Silicon Power Slim S60 240GB Solid State Drive Review

Introduction

Continuing our reviews of the Silicon Power solid-state drives, we’ve gotten to the Slim S60, a mid-ranged performance drive in the 7mm thin Slim series perfect for notebooks as well as desktop systems.

The  Silicon Power Slim S60 is available in 5 capacity version all the way up to 960GB. The smaller capacities available are 60GB, 120GB, 240GB, and 480GB and I’m taking a closer look at the 240GB model today. The drive is rated for a sequential read performance up to 520MB/s reading and 460MB/s writing, which shouldn’t be any trouble to achieve for the hardware inside.

The Silicon Power Slim S60 SSD is built with a Phison S10 controller which has proven itself in numerous drives and comes with synchronous NAND flash. The Slim S60 has all the basic features that an SSD needs to have, including S.M.A.R.T., TRIM, Garbage collection, NCQ, and wear leveling. It is also RAID ready for those who want even faster setups with all the features available. Silicon Power also included error correction code to guarantee data transmission reliability.

Making the upgrade from a mechanical hard disk drive to a solid-state drive is something that everyone needs to experience, there simply isn’t any comparison. An SSD isn’t just a lot faster, it also consumes less power which is great for stationary systems as well as mobile ones. There are no moving parts and thereby no noise or vibration and it makes it more shockproof than traditional storage drives. You also eliminate latency delays and seek errors.

The SP Slim S60 is also available as upgrade kits that include a shockproof enclosure, screwdriver, and NTI Echo cloning software for an easy upgrade in three steps. It also allows you to use your old drive as an external portable drive afterward. The included enclosure provides rugged protection against shocks, scratches, and abrasions, and it features a cable wrap-around design for easy portability.

Inside the two-piece screwless enclosure, we find a 2/3 sized PCB with four NAND chips on each side. The controller is a Phison PS3110-S10 and the NAND should be Toshiba 19nm MLC NAND from the DP58G5LAPA inscription. There is also a Nanya 128MB cache chip on the top.

Features

• SATA III 6Gbps backward compatible with SATA II 3Gbps
• Super-high transfer rate: 520MB/s max. Read speed / 460MB/s max. Write speed
• Supports TRIM command and Garbage Collection technology
• Synchronous flash built-in
• NCQ and RAID ready
• Equipped with Wear Leveling to extend endurance
• Implemented with ECC technology to guarantee data transmission reliability
• Built-in with SMART monitoring system
• Low power consumption
• Shockproof & Anti-Vibration
• Noiseless operation, no latency delay and no seek error
• 3-year warranty

Packaging

The Silicon Power Slim S60 comes in a simple blister package displaying the included drive itself on the front. At the same time, it also displays the main features, warranty period, and slim drive height.

The rear of the package has the basic feature list in multiple languages as well as the average performance increase one would gain compared to a mechanical drive.

The leaflet inside the package opens up for a simple installation guide, feature list, and specification.