SanDisk, who is better known for their flash media has now entered the Solid State Drive market. Enter the SanDisk Ultra 120GB SSD which is geared as a laptop upgrade drive, increasing performance virtually all aspects: quicker boot times, cooler, quieter performance, increased reliability with no moving parts and more than double the read/write performance of a 7200 RPM HDD with speeds of up to 280 MB/s read and 270 MB/s write.
This drive hits the market at a $200 price point which is decent but not great considering the SATA II 3Gb/s interface. You can pick up a SATA III 6Gb/s Crucial M4 128GB SSD for about the same price. Like most SSDs, the SanDisk Ultra comes in a 2.5″ form factor and sports the familiar SanDisk black and red colors we’ve all come to know and love and even though this thing is durable as hell with no moving parts, SanDisk has you covered in the unlikely situation something goes wrong with a limited 3-year warranty.
In our testing you can see the SanDisk Ultra SSD lived up to the claimed speeds with a maximum read of 280 MB/s and a maximum write of 259 MB/s. Compared to a traditional 5400 RPM HDD which you’ll find in most laptops these days, the performance was more than twice that of it’s moving parts counterpart.
Overall SanDisk did an excellent job with their first stab in the Solid State Drive world. Adding an SSD in to your machine is probably one of the best upgrades you can give your machine and the SanDisk Ultra 120GB SSD fits the bill. Although it is marketed as a laptop upgrade it’ll work nicely in your desktop with the addition of 3.5″ adapter and it’ll play nicely on both PC and Mac. The only downside was the price at $200 which needs to come down around $50 to be a 10/10. If you can find it on sale or with a rebate we can totally recommend it here at Tech of Tomorrow as it’ll breathe new life to your machine giving you increased performance and peace of mind with San Disk’s’ 3-warranty and solid customer service.
