Tag Archives: SSD

Our review of Seagate’s latest FireCuda Gen4 DRAMless consumer SSD has left us somewhat perplexed, and quite frankly, a little surprised. Until we examined the controller used in this drive, we had long assumed that Seagate and Phison maintained a strategic, long-term partnership across their SSD product lines. This release appears to mark a significant departure from that relationship. Rather …

It is funny how things work out sometimes.  While at Computex in Taipei a few weeks back, we were introduced to Frank Chen, CEO of Exascend, through our contacts at SMI.  Frank laid out their company values and explained key reasoning for their success which is their ability to customize and cater to their customers needs in a shorter time …

I just can’t wrap my head around why KIOXIA hasn’t brought its consumer SSDs to North America. And, in the same vein, I still don’t fully understand why Micron retired the much-loved Crucial brand. That said, I’m convinced KIOXIA-branded SSDs would do extremely well here, potentially rivaling those top-tier bestsellers we all know. In the meantime, our small team is …

Phison’s newest E37T DRAMless controller was on display at Computex 2026 this week and appears to be a force to be reckoned with.  This DRAMless SSD comes along at a time when SSDs are at a premium, the result of NAND and DRAM pricing being driven up through AI needs.  I don’t think we have seen pricing this high since …

Less than a week from now The SSD  Review/Technology X is off to Computex Taipei!  This has been a staple in our business attendance for some 14 years now and we are looking forward to the trip, this year sponsored by our friends at Silicon Motion once again.  It will be great to touch base with old friends and new, …

It’s rare that we open a report with such high praise for a product right from the first sentence. It’s even rarer when that product happens to be an external SSD. In fact, I’ve only done it once before back in 2018 for the Tekq Rapide. That same TB3 external SSD is still sitting right in front of me today. …

It has been a while since this release, but we received an SSD in the mail today that deserves a quick look: the XPG Mars 980 Blade by ADATA. This 1TB SSD stands out because we can’t remember the last time we had a drive of this capacity in hand, let alone reviewed one. Times are changing, however, and NAND …

Our look at the KIOXIA CD9P-R Gen5 Data Center SSD marks a first for The SSD Review, and it’s a bit of a nostalgic one. Our connection with the KIOXIA team stretches back many years, all the way to the early OCZ Revo and Vertex days. That lineage later became Toshiba, and eventually KIOXIA around 2018–2019. Since shifting our focus …

With the price of memory these days, it can only be expected that we will see more value-driven options in both client and consumer SSD solutions, such as pre-configured PCs and laptops. Right in line with this, KIOXIA has introduced its first Gen4 QLC NAND equipped SSD known as the EG7. The KIOXIA EG7 Series is a PCIe 4.0 (Gen4) …

It is not often that we start a report off speaking to the interior components of an SSD.  This is that exception so bear with us as this will play out very well.  Last June, we attended Computex and discovered a new PCIe 5.0 SSD controller by SMI, the SM2504XT.  Its extremely small footprint tied into great performance, while having …