Now, Transcend has joined the party, introducing its first entry in the NVMe SSD space. The new drive comes under the MTE850 moniker and brings some improvements that should provide for good performance, as Tom’s Hardware reports.
The Transcend MTE850 utilizes Micron 3D MLC NAND flash memory coupled with Silicon Motion’s SM2260 dual-core controller. As Tom’s Hardware points out, that particular combo isn’t known for providing the most consistent performance. According to Transcend, however, the MTE850 utilizes a writing feature dubbed “Direct-To-Die” that hopes to provide for higher sustained and more consistent write speeds.
Indeed, Transcend is promising up to 2.5GB per second sequential read and 1.1GBps sequential write speeds, which would make the MTE850 competitive with most SSDs in its price range. Transcend rates the drives, which are M.2 form factor SSDs and the company’s first utilizing a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface, at 110K IPS for random write and 270K IOPS for random read operations.
Finally, users can download Transcend’s Scope utility that provides a number of drive management capabilities. Scope provides the ability to view drive information, access SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) diagnostic status and information, securely erase drives, enable TRIM for optimal write speeds, update drive firmware, and make cloning data from another drive easier and more efficient.
The Transcend MTE850 promises to enjoy midrange pricing, specifically $95 for the 128GB version, $160 for 256GB, and $300 for 512GB. Availability hasn’t yet been announced and the drives come with a three-year limited warranty that takes overall write volume into consideration.
