Patriot Zephyr 128GB JMicron Solid-State Drive Review

Capacity, Final Thoughts & Conclusions

As with all newer SSD’s, the Patriot Zephyr has some over-provisioning done to keep a portion of the NAND available for the drive’s internal usage to help maintain performance. According to Windows, 119GB is available to the user after formatting.

Performance from the Zephyr is pretty much on par from what we have seen from similar drives using the newer JMicron controllers. The specifications of up to 240MB/s read and 145MB/s write were observed multiple times during benchmarking and performance appears to be as Patriot predicts in their literature.

Performance of the drive during real-world usage elicits no complaints. Using Windows 7 Professional, there was no noticeable lag or stuttering during heavy simultaneous read/write operations and the OS felt very responsive with files opening in a snap. Having a three year warranty is a nice reassurance in case you do have problems. With TRIM and garbage collection both supported, you can expect performance to remain fairly consistent over time.

Patriot faces some stiff competition as there are a number of SSD’s on
the market already with performance on par or exceeding that of the Zephyr. Some of these are based off different controllers and may also come with extras such as drive adapter brackets. The Zephyr drives are just now making it to market and we were only able to find them for sale online at Amazon.com where the 128GB version lists for $358. This price is a bit higher than some of the above referenced competition but when availability is limited and a product is brand new, retailers tend to ask premium prices. We fully expect to see this drop in a relatively short period of time.

Legit Bottom Line: The Patriot Zephyr is a solid addition to the existing line of Patriot SSD’s but may find itself getting the cold shoulder from consumers if the pricing doesn’t fall more in line with some of its peers.