PNY CS2211 SSD Review (240GB/480GB)

Just last week we announced PNY’s latest SSD products for the new year, the CS1311 and CS2211. It just so happens that today we have some in our hands for review. The CS1311 is your basic, entry level SSD jam packed with TLC NAND for those looking for a cheap SSD upgrade from an HDD. As you may have noticed as of late, many companies have been following this trend to help push SSD adaptation to the masses, however, for enthusiasts and gamers, these lower performance SSDs are something which we avoid. For those of us who need more performance, the PNY CS2211 is a mainstream offering developed specifically for us, the gamer and enthusiast crowd. With a sleek design and great performance numbers on the spec sheet, the CS2211 should hold its own very well in today’s review. But, let’s not jump to any conclusions just yet, continue on as we poke and prod the new PNY CS2211 to see how it compares to the rest of the competition!

PNY XLR8 CS2211 SSD Main

SPECIFICATIONS, PRICING, AND AVAILABILITY

The PNY CS2211 comes in a 7mm 2.5″ form factor and is available in three capacities: 240GB ($89.99), 480GB ($159.99), and 960GB ($309.99). Read speeds are rated for up to 565MB/s and writes for up to 540MB/s. In terms of IOPS the 480GB model can deliver up to 95K IOPS read/write while the 240GB model takes a slight hit in reads, delivering 87K IOPS.

The PNY CS2211 comes with a license for Acronis True Image to help ease the upgrade to an SSD. So, if you need to clone, it will be a painless transition. Furthermore, it features full end-to-end data path protection as well as ECC rated for up to 120 bits per 2K sector. SMART and secure erase capability is also supported as well as TRIM. When looking at power consumption it is rated for an average active consumption of 3.3W and 0.2W idle. Finally, the MTBF rating for this SSD is higher than its predecessor and is now rated for 2 million hours and it has a standardized 4-year warranty rather than the 2+2-year warranty where you needed to register for the extra two years in the past.

Finally, at this time, this SSD is not yet available for purchase, however, it will be available February 15th.

PACKAGING AND COMPONENTS

Just as in the past, the PNY CS2211 has very nice, premium packaging. All the important information is on the front and back. Inside we can see that on top of the Acronis True Image serial key and guide it comes with a 2.5mm spacer.

PNY XLR8 CS2211 SSD Packaging PNY XLR8 CS2211 SSD Accessories

Rather than continue the fire or animal type design on this SSD PNY has chosen to go with a more simplistic grunge look, which we think looks very pleasing.

PNY XLR8 CS2211 SSD Front and Back

After we disassembled the SSD from its clamp shell case we could see what makes it tick. Inside is a Phison controller, Toshiba MLC NAND, and Nanya DRAM.

PNY XLR8 CS2211 SSD PCB Front PNY XLR8 CS2211 SSD PCB Back

Overall, there are 8 NAND packages on the 240GB model and 16 on the 480GB model, thus this extra parallelism explains the slightly better write speeds of the larger model. The NAND is specifically 15nm Toshiba MLC. Each package is 32GiB in capacity, meaning that overall these drives employ 7% over provisioning from the factory. Once formatted, the available user capacity for storage is 223GB and 447GB respectively.

PNY XLR8 CS2211 SSD Controller

The DDR3L DRAM package is 256MB on the 240GB model and 512MB on the 480GB model and they operate at 800MHz. The Phison PS3110-S10-X is a 32-bit quad-core eight channel SATA III 6Gbps controller that has proven to be very robust. It has been used in many SSDs as of late and it should be interesting to see how this product compares to those we have tested before.

8 comments

  1. blank

    G’day Sean

    Seems the same Phison made drive with 19nm flash is faster,

    and possibly cheaper………….

    https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/zotac-premium-edition-ssd,4397-3.html

  2. blank

    Glad to see reviews again instead of announcements. But It amazes me how these companies advertise their new ssds with so much enthusiasm, when there new ssds are slower than the previous generation. It’s like, yeah we shrunk the nand size again, Woopie!!! And now it’s a little slower but almost as fast.

    • blank

      As long as it performs adequately and the endurance/retention is reasonable, there is nothing wrong. After all, each generation is getting cheaper.

  3. blank

    Does this performs better that Samsung 850 Pro and Crucial M550? I am lost which to choose…

  4. blank

    Ugh, all the graphs have two SSDs using the white line. which one is which ?

  5. blank

    You say this is a TLC Nand but the official website says its an MLC https://www.pny.com/ssd-cs2211 I am going crazy here. Anandtech also says its an MLC.
    Well I am going crazy cause many people are saying that TLC drives come in 120/240 capacities and only the MLC come in 128/256 and so on capacities.
    I have seen uptill now two brands that have the 120/240 capacites but claim to be MLC one is PNY and the other is Chiprex. So I am confused. These are really cheap but I don’t want it if its a TLC Could someone please confirm

    • blank

      TLC -is- MLC

      MLC = Multiple-level cell
      TLC = Triple-level cell

      Multiple means more than one.. 3 is more than one.

      MLC usually means 2 levels per-cell, but manufacturers can sometimes label TLC as MLC.

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