News $3 SATA SSD vs $5 NVMe SSD: Which Is The Better Deal?

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At the very least the comparison should be between drives of equal capacity rather than pitting 120 GB drive vs. 960 GB drive etc.

Secondly what's with missing data for comparison drives? Too busy mocking AliExpress crap to take note and enter data into the tables?

Drives tested may be poor performers (= crap) but so is this "review" by StorageReview.
 
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The best thing about these drives is they are actual SSDs, even if the performance is SD-card level. They should probably only be considered at most as reliabile as SD cards though. But the NVMe drive is a bad value. Don't get it.
 
gondor said:
At the very least the comparison should be between drives of equal capacity rather than pitting 120 GB drive vs. 960 GB drive etc.

Secondly what's with missing data for comparison drives? Too busy mocking AliExpress crap to take note and enter data into the tables?

Drives tested may be poor performers (= crap) but so is this "review" by StorageReview.
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The source is here: https://www.storagereview.com/review/the-3-ssd-the-drive-you-never-knew-you-didnt-need

They have enough information to show the drives are not good.
 
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I have bought maybe the same SATA SSD something like 3 years before, I am not sure about the exact model, but the manufacturer is Goldenfir, and the casing is apparently identical.

I have installed it into an old Core 2 Duo laptop for a relatively elderly person, who uses it mainly/almost only for browsing, on a lightweight OS, so even filling up its storage space is unlikely in this use case. After poweering on it boots to desktop in at about 30 seconds, launching Chromium is something like 1-2 seconds additionally.

Well, durability-wise, considering the price it have done the trick, it is up and running at least a few hours/day since then, plus apparently not deteriorated yet. When it comes to similar tier of stuff, imo Goldenfir is ok, or at least far from the worst idea. I have found it looking for something very cheap but possibly close to being rated high, plus sold at a volume at the same time on Aliexpress.

Although obviously, by now there are SSDs for not much more, from much more known manufacturers. All in all I considered it being a fun article, seeing this old acquintnace of mine once again 😆
 
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Alvar Miles Udell said:
The NVMe drive is a better deal, slap it in to an NVMe USB enclosure, and for about the same price as a Samsung 128gb USB drive you have a portable SSD that can fit in both USB Type A and C ports.
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Storage Review actually seemed to hate that drive more. Also, the price per gigabyte is not great when compared to the $30-$40 name-brand SSDs.
 
I have had great luck with china drives especially msata variety and specialty 2230 before they were common. Kingspec is what I bought but the price was anything but cheap. I think with storage you largely get what you pay for, if it is cheap high risk of being fraud or poor performance. If you need cheap storage go to ebay and buy used drives or check out your local market place. I filled up on used 2tb drives at around the $50-60 mark.

Too bad about goldenfir performance, but as these are using discerete components (NAND and controller) and not rebadged micro sd, they should be a lot more robust and hold up in install. I am guessing the issue is the controller and its lack of tuning, at the price point these are likely clearing stock of a limited run.
 
infinitytec said:
The best thing about these drives is they are actual SSDs, even if the performance is SD-card level. They should probably only be considered at most as reliabile as SD cards though. But the NVMe drive is a bad value. Don't get it.
Click to expand...
I always bought brand name SD Cards like Sandisk or Samsung. A few cards are still working well 5+ years. I guess you're talking about cheap no name SD Cards?
 
The graphs in the source review are consistently labeled in microseconds (it even uses the greek mu, instead of just a "u"), yet the text consistently uses milliseconds, and Tom's "summary" of the review carries over the error. I'm going to guess that the graphs are correct (being automatically produced by their benchmarking software) and the surrounding text is wrong. (I'm not sure that a latency of "30,000 milliseconds" is even possible; I'd think the command would timeout first.) But no matter which one is correct; this is an obvious error that could have been spotted at any of several points.

Both authors should have known better, and editors for either site should have spotted the problem. If Tom's is just going to essentially re-print somebody else's work, is it too much to ask them to at least sanity-check it first?

And, really, the review was kind of stupid; of course nobody expects these things to keep up with an enterprise-grade SSD! How does it compare to the absolute-cheapest consumer-grade SSD from a brand people have heard of? How does it compare to an SD card stuck in a USB reader?
 
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Not only are these SSDs slow but, would you actually trust them to retain your data safely? I wouldn't.

Here in the UK, Amazon will sell you a Crucial P3 500GB, for just under £26, a much more sensible bargain, even if you don't care about speed.
 
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gondor said:
At the very least the comparison should be between drives of equal capacity rather than pitting 120 GB drive vs. 960 GB drive etc.

Secondly what's with missing data for comparison drives? Too busy mocking AliExpress crap to take note and enter data into the tables?

Drives tested may be poor performers (= crap) but so is this "review" by StorageReview.
Click to expand...
Bro, it's a light-hearted article.
 
dimar said:
I always bought brand name SD Cards like Sandisk or Samsung. A few cards are still working well 5+ years. I guess you're talking about cheap no name SD Cards?
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I'm thinking more about using them as 24/7 storage in a computer. I've managed to kill a few with one Raspberry Pi running 24/7 over a number of years.
 
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