Silicon Power Slim S80 240GB Solid State Drive Review

Introduction

Silicon Power has been in the storage business for a long time and I’m glad to finally be able to put one of their drives on the bench and take it for a test run. Today I’m taking a closer look at the SP Slim S80 solid state drive that comes with promises impressive performance and is available with capacities up to 960GB. It is however, the 240GB model that I’m taking a look at today.

The Slim S80 is equipped with a Phison PS3108-S8 SATA-to-Flash micro-controller to deliver sequential transfer rates up to 550MB/s reads 500MB/s writes while offering impressive 4K random speeds of up to 80,000 IOPS. With such a performances, the Slim S80 can significantly reduce both boot times and quickly load applications as well as provide a higher reliability than traditional hard disk drives and provide higher reliability over traditional hard drive.

Silicon Power’s Slim S80 is carrying its name thanks to the 7mm height for use in ultrabooks, ultra slim notebooks, and similar narrow spaced usage areas; on top of that it only weighs 63 grams. Solid state drives are perfect to use in mobile devices thanks to the lack of mechanical parts so they aren’t affected by shocks and vibrations in the same way.

Built with both S.M.A.R.T., Wear Leveling techniques, and Error Correction Code, the Slim S80 should guarantee data safety on top of the great performance and a long lifespan. The used Phison controller also supports AES encryption to keep your data safe and DevSleep for a low power consumption in mobile devices.

Specifications

• Capacity: 32GB/60GB/120GB/240GB/480GB/960GB
• Dimensions: 100mm x 69.85mm x 7mm
• Weight: 79g
• Vibration Resistance Test: 20G
• Shock Resistance Test: 1500G Max
• Read up to 550MB/s、Write up to 500MB/s
• 7mm slim design suitable for Ultrabooks and Ultra-slim notebooks
• SATA III 6Gbps backward compatible with SATA II 3Gbps
• Supports TRIM command and Garbage Collection technology
• NCQ and RAID ready
• Implemented with ECC technology to guarantee data transmission reliability
• Built-in with SMART monitoring system
• 3-year warranty

Besides the Phison controller, the S80 has 16 of Toshiba’s 19nm flash chips and a 256MB Nanya RAM chip.