Toshiba HG6 THNSNJ512GCSU 512GB Solid State Drive Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

The Toshiba HG6 is a tough drive to find in the US, but EU and UK has a wide availability. Amazon UK has the 512GB model listed for just £199.99 and Overclockers UK also has it in stock for £209.99. The US shop I found with the drive was Servers Direct where it will set you back the full MSRP of $410.00 while German readers can pick one up starting at €286.92.

Conclusion

Toshiba is no stranger to SSDs as they basically invented them, or at least the NAND technology, so it doesn’t come as any surprise that the Toshiba HG6 512GB SSD scored great in our benchmarks. It impressed with good speeds as well as a being packed with great features including an improved error correction code. We saw sequential speeds up to 550MBs at reading and 510MB/s writing, as well as a random performance up to 90K IOPS.

The HG6 is a perfect drive for mobile workstations such as laptops, ultrabooks, and netbooks. It is packed full of energy-saving features with Device Initiated Power Management, Host Initiated Power Management and Device Sleep for reduced power consumption. It won’t lie heavy either as the drive only weighs 53 grams in this 512GB version.

Toshiba’s Quadruple Swing-By Code error correction code should improve your data safety beyond the normal ECC protection and the drive also has all the basic features such as End-to-End Data Protection, SMART, TRIM, Garbage collection, and NCQ.

There isn’t much to say when it comes to the layout and design as this is an OEM drive. It only features an information sticker and the second side is left blank for the company that uses the drive. The enclosure is a bare metal that would look great in steampunk builds, but also any other that highlights the bare essentials. Inside the drive I was surprised to see it only using one side of the PCB. Most drives of this capacity use both sides to fit in more NAND chips. Toshiba didn’t use a RAM buffer in this drive, but rather relies on an SLC portion of the NAND to keep a steady data burst. Of course the drive is packed with Toshiba’s own A19nm MLC NAND as well as an in-house created controller.

Pros

• Good performance
• Impressive feature list
• Lightweight and energy efficient, perfect for portable devices

Negative

•  Anvil’s showed a score drop to the end of the tests

Neutral

• OEM drive, no accessories

“Toshiba’s HG6 512GB SSD is a complete in-house creation from controller to NAND, and one that I wouldn’t mind being at the centre of my own system. Top performance, top features, top drive.”

Thanks to Toshiba for providing us with this sample.