Patriot Scorch 256GB M.2 NVMe SSD Review

By Nathan Kirsch

Final Thoughts & Conclusions

The Patriot Scorch M.2 Internal SSDs aren’t going to win any performance benchmarks, but they are solid little drives thanks to their use of the Phison PS-5008-E8 controller and Toshiba’s 64-layer 3D TLC NAND Flash memory. This appears to be the low-cost M.2 NVMe drive choice of 2018 as a number of companies are going this route. The Phison E8 (PS5008-E8) controller offers thermal throttling, end-to-end data path protection, Phison’s proprietary StrongECC algorithm, and a SmartECC engine to detect and correct data corruption. The Phison E8 controller also offers power loss protection with GuaranteedFlush to prevent in-flight data loss from sudden power interruptions, advanced security features including Secure Erase, and support for APST / ASPM / L1.2 power saving modes. It would have been nice to see a toolkit from Patriot that allows end users to easily see drive information, perform a secure erase, install any future firmware updates and so on, but that would have likely added some cost to this drive and that is the main thing this drive has going for it.

So, if you went online trying to find reviews to see if this ‘cheap’ NVMe SSD sucks, we think that most would be happy with the performance numbers we saw on the Patriot Scorch 256GB drive. This drive can run hot during period of long writes, so our only suggestion would be to ensure it has good airflow. Some active cooling blowing air across this drive or a M.2 heatsink with some airflow around it should provide enough cooling to ensure it doesn’t throttle. You don’t want your drive to get scorched right? �

Patriot Scorch M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD

The Patriot Scorch M.2 NVMe series is one of the cheapest drives on the market today. Pricing on the Patriot Scorch 128GB is $49.99 shipped or roughly $0.39 per GB and that is the lowest priced 128GB NVMe drive we could find. We tested the Patriot Scorch 256GB drive today and it runs $84.99 shipped or $0.33 per GB, which is within $5 of being the lowest priced NVMe drive on the market for that capacity. The MyDigitalSSD SBX 256GB drive at $84.99 shipped is the cheapest 256GB NVMe drive that we could find and it just happens to use the same controller.

Patriot Scorch M.2 PCIe NVMe Series Pricing

  • Patriot Scorch 128GB – PS128GPM280SSDR – $49.99 shipped ($0.39 per GB)
  • Patriot Scorch 256GB – PS256GPM280SSDR – $84.99 shipped ($0.33 per GB)
  • Patriot Scorch 512GB – PS512GPM280SSDR – Coming Soon

At the end of the day the Patriot Scorch 256GB drive performed pretty well for a drive that runs under $85 shipped. You get just the bare drive in hand card style packaging, but you really don’t need anything else and this was done to keep pricing down. The Patriot Scorch series is backed by a 3-year warranty and has an endurance rating of 74 TBW per every 128GB of storage sapce.

Legit Reviews Value Award

Legit Bottom Line: If you are looking for the lowest priced NVMe drive on the market, you’ll come across Patriot Scorch series and the performance is respectable for the price!