Tigo T-One 240GB Low Cost SSD Review

[Guest]

Abundant flash availability, affordably-priced processors and a growing market are encouraging more companies to jump into SSDs. Today we're looking at a result of those forces in the form of an entry-level drive from a brand you've never heard of.

Tigo T-One 240GB Low Cost SSD Review : Read more

 

[James Mason]

Would have like to see a price to performance chart to compare all the ones tested.

 

[darcotech]

The price of Samsung EVO 850 250Gb is 88.67USD not 149.99. And could be probably found even cheaper.
Buying cheap SSD from non established company is big no for me. My data are on it, and I want to feel safe (even if I have backup).

 

[joex444]

Even if you wanted to spend just $61 on a 240GB SSD, there are other options. PNY, AData, and Kingston all offer 240GB SSDs *lower* than $61. These are all companies that have been around for a good amount of time whereas Tigo is a completely unknown company from China, which tends to be a source of lower quality parts compared to S. Korea, Japan, or Taiwan.

 

[shrapnel_indie]

Tektronix is an old U.S. company that still exists. I hope the opening statements were about when Tigo started and not them as Tektronix got its start in 1946.

http://www.tek.com/about-us

 

[RobinEricsson]

> Tigo is a division of Tektronix [...]

Tektronix, as in the electronics test and measurement tool company (http://www.tek.com/ )? Are you sure about that?

It doesn't seem that computer memory and oscilloscopes are closely related. Plus the website of Tektronix's parent company, Danaher, doesn't list Tigo or its worldwide brand Kimtigo as one of the companies in its portfolio (http://www.danaher.com/our-businesses/business-directory ).

 

[captaincharisma]

its like every computer related company in the world is selling its own SSD drives now

 

[mapesdhs]

I recently tested a Gloway SSD (a model eBay keeps pushing in its "other items like this" listings), easily one of the worst models I've ever come across, terrible write speeds. Definitely avoid.

 

[rhysiam]

Your verdict seems a little scare-mongering and introduces a theme which (unless I've missed it) wasn't addressed anywhere else in the review" "you need to decide if losing data is worth the $20 you saved".

What are you basing that on? Have you got data or theory or at least personal experience to back that up?

That line made me go and read the article, assuming I'd find a story of multiple failed drives during your testing process, but I can't see a single sentence about reliability or data retention in the article (correct me if I'm wrong!) You shouldn't really advise your readers to avoid a drive because it'll lose their data if you haven't actually addressed or supported that assertion in the article itself.

 

[CRamseyer]

Here is the deal with reliability. The big names in the industry do no cut corners. Samsung, Intel, Micron/Crucial, SK Hynix, Toshiba and SanDisk are the fab companies. They make the flash and they also get first pick when from the production. These companies also know about features in the memory to enable or disable to increase reliability, performance and so on. Most of the extra switches have to do with the ECC (linked to reliability).

I kill SSDs all of the time. It happens so often that I don't even think about it when it happens. Many of the companies send me early drives to test with pre-release firmware. I would estimate that 2 our of every 5 die during testing. Retail products have a much higher success rate. I may kill one in every 60 or so. My testing goes well beyond what anyone would consider normal use so don't let the high percentage take away from buying a new SSD.

When a product review goes live that isn't the end of my testing. At any time I'm developing 3 to 5 new tests for consideration in SSD or NAS reviews. Every once in awhile you will see one of these tests in a regular review to show a corner case problem.

With that said, it's rare for a fab company SSD to fail. I'm not saying they never fail, just the rate is much lower than products from smaller companies. I have around 300 SSDs (maybe more) dating back to 2007 so we are not talking about a small sample size.

Last but not least, I've been in 4 test labs. Two of the companies were fab companies and two were not. The difference is night and day between what the big names in the industry do compared to what the smaller companies do.

That is not to say that I would never use SSDs from smaller companies. I do use them in my lab but when it comes to systems I keep valuable data on, I use fab company drives.

 

[wh3resmycar]

ocz trion 100 goes for like $50 here in the philippines (240gb). i use my ssd for games mainly and considering i have a 100MB connection i can afford to have a broken ssd and redownload my whole librabry in a couple of hours.

 

[gondor]

I hope "Tigo" stands for something very cool in Chinese ... Because if it doesn't their marketing department really shot themselves in the foot going from "Kingtiger" to "Tigo" ...

 

[SuperVeloce]

"It's important to remember that these products hold data that can be lost forever. Before you shop based on price alone, you need to decide if losing data is worth the $20 you saved."
If your data is lost forever, you deserve it. Sorry, but not having a backup of important files is just moronic. Steam library doesn't count as it can be downloaded again.

The only two drives ever to die on me were Samsungs. 830 and the original 840 (vanilla?). But I don't care much for that, warranty and my backup is there to cover that and samsung is now pushing long(er) warranty periods even on their EVO line.

 

[zodiacfml]

I agree with RHYSIAM.
Nothing in the test or testing experience showed that this is less reliable than the reputable brands. If they warrant this product of up to 3 years, then they're not selling this for low cost but low reliability.

SSDs indeed have become cheap because the HDDs parts are simply costlier. It was just a matter of volume or scale and HDDs were cheap because of the existing scale. SSDs can become cheaper by eliminating the 2.5" chassis and come up with a plastic case the size of its PCB. This one had a Samsung DRAM too.

If you want to give praise to the popular brands or create a quality gap to this unknown company, create a test with random reads and writes. The power consumption is negligible if power comes from an AC outlet like my laptop which is just always plugged in.

 

[Mark RM]

You can sure tell where the money is flowing from when this kind of thing makes the reviews section.

 

[mapesdhs]

... Sorry, but not having a backup of important files is just moronic. ...

This is why I've started fitting all systems I build with a Startech trayless 2-bay 2.5" hotswap unit (fits in a single 5.25" bay using a 3.5/5.25" adapter), thus allowing for full cloning of the C-drive to a backup without having to power cycle the system. Put in the SSD, secure erase, clone with Macrium, "eject" the SSD just as if it was a USB device or something, then physically eject the SSD by pushing the release catch on the tray. And for systems that don't have hotswap as a per-port SATA option in the BIOS, there's a handy free tool that lets one do it manually. Combine normal data backups with a regular C-drive clone, it's already saved much hassle once after a botched driver setup for a SAS card I was testing.

 

[CRamseyer]

"You can sure tell where the money is flowing from when this kind of thing makes the reviews section."

You may have missed the part about the controller and flash combination. This was the first time we had the SM2256 with SK Hynix TLC.

This article doesn't have a lot of value for most of our readers (unless you live in China), but it allows me to better understand this controller and flash.

 

[Flyingbong]

I am also glad that you willing to do review on SSD from not widely known company. At least it is something fresh to see unlike those from other sites that do review on all the same brand.