SanDisk Ultra II 240GB SSD Review – SanDisk’s First TLC NAND SSD

Final Thoughts & Conclusions

Looking at the capacity of the SanDisk Ultra II 240GB drive, we saw 256GB (1GB byte = 1,000,000,000 bytes) on board in Windows reports the capacity accessible to the end user as 223GiB, 447GiB and 894Gib (1Gib = 1,073,741,824 bytes). This is similar to what we see on just about any consumer level drive these days.

So at the end of the day, where do we stand here? Well, we end up with a very solid budget oriented drive that competes very well with its peers and priced very competitively as well. With the 120GB, 240GB, 480GB and 960GB drives retailing for $79.99, $109.99, $199.99 and $379.99 respectively, they are some of the most inexpensive drives you can get today with near enthusiast drive performance. The 960GB drive is priced under $0.40 per GB without and sale prices or rebates being involved.

With the TLC NAND inside, power usage is pretty low. We were able to measure the idle draw at 0.502W and active to be 4.31W. Both are right about where SanDisk specifies. This power consumption is also pretty much what we saw on the TLC laden Samsung 840 drive. As such, those with mobile devices that run on batteries will find this choice appealing although there is no DevSleep support at this time (and maybe never) so it’s something to keep in mind.

At a high level, the things that separate enterprise level drives are endurance, performance and special features like encryption and power loss protection. With the TLC NAND, some may expect endurance to be an issue but with SanDisk’s nCache 2.0 technology along with some other technical tricks, they’ve managed to really reduce write amplification so longevity should be closer to that of an MLC drive. They do offer a three year warranty which is about standard anymore. Performance as mentioned is very good at 550MB/s reads and 500MB/s writes. Not where we see enthusiast level drives but still not far off and really not enough to notice a difference for most users. However, it’s very consistent and we saw no aberrations in our testing. Encryption is another feature absent but for many it’s not even a thought in terms of a feature desired when shopping for a drive. The dashboard software is one of the best drive utilities we’ve seen to date and the bundled extras can be handy too although not free in the long term.

On the few instances we spoke to SanDisk about this drive, they were very excited about it and understandably so. Other than Samsung, they are the only ones with a very solid consumer offering of a TLC based drive. It remains to be seen if others will follow and if long term they hold up as expected in comparison to MLC drives. SanDisk is really pushing hard to gain the market share they have in the memory card space and they are certainly on the right track for doing so.

Legit Bottom Line: The SanDisk Ultra II SSD has low pricing and power consumption with speedy and consistent performance so it earns our Legit Reviews recommended award!