PNY isn't a name we associate with SSDs, and
its range isn't as extensive as the likes of Corsair or OCZ.
In fact, the French company only offers a
single drive. Its imaginatively named Professional SSD serves up 120GB of
space, and follows the blueprint set by the majority of its rivals - SandForce
2281 controller, MLC NAND.
It's an inauspicious name and
specification, then, but PNY is clearly doing something right: the drive's
large file write score of 507.4MB/S is the best this month, and slightly ahead
of the 500.9MB/S result of the Corsair Performance Series Pro. The PNY couldn't
maintain this pace in the rest of our tests, though; its 307.2MB/s speed in the
large file read benchmark is one of the worst here, and its small file write
and read benchmark results of 166.5MB/S and 27.4MB/S are again among the
slowest on test. The victorious Corsair, by way of contrast, motored through
the same tests at 186.4MB/S and 30.4MB/S.
The AS SSD write tests didn't do the PNY
drive any favours either. The Professional SSD's sequential file write score of
158.66MB/S is slower than most of the other drives here, and its 4K-64 write
result of 64.54MB/S is similarly poor - the Kingston HyperX, a consistent
performer with smaller files, scored 80.69MB/s in the same benchmark.
AS SSD's file reading results were mixed
too. The drive's sequential read score of 509.84MB/s is one of the best here,
but its 4K-64 file reading pace of 114.34MB/S is one of the worst: the Plextor
M3 Pro ran through the same test at 275.59MB/S. The final AS SSD file reading
benchmark, the 4K test, saw the PNY run through at 21,4MB/s - a poor score when
compared to the best here: the 27.1 MB/s speed served up by the Plextor M3 Pro.
Like the Patriot, the PNY SSD proves
disappointing when it comes to accessories. There's nothing included in the
package, with not even the bare minimum of a 2.5" to 3.5" bracket
served up by the manufacturer, so you'll have to buy your own if you want to
fit this particular SSD into your home PC.
At $1.936 per gigabyte and costing $216 for
a 120GB drive, the PNY isn't particularly expensive - the AData and Patriot
drives cost $2.208 and $2.32 per gigabyte, for instance. That makes it fine
value when compared to the other smaller SSDs, even if its performance can't
quite match the best here.
When it comes to overall value, though,
other drives balance the pence-per-gigabyte figure with better levels of
performance: the Plextor M3 Pro costs $1.92 per gigabyte, and the Corsair
Performance Series Pro will set you back $1.84 per gigabyte. They're both much
faster and much more consistent and, with little price difference between the
drives, they're the SSDs we'd recommend -not this disappointing effort from
PNY.
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Details
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Price
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$216, $1.936 per gigabyte
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Manufacturer
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PNY
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Website
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www.pny.com |
