SanDisk Ultra Plus 256GB SSD Review

Looking at the vast number of drives on the market, there are so many different combinations of controller and flash memory to choose from, for some it is a daunting prospect and thus they stick to the big names that have a proven following and typically this means that they will end up with a drive that houses a SandForce controller and a traditional array of 16GB 22nm NAND IC’s from another partner.

SandDisk, like many other companies, are looking for a way to push their products to the forefront of the SSD market and in the case of SanDisk, this has resulted in a new architecture on the drive with the inclusion of a highly efficient Marvell controller with independent channels leading towards some of SanDisk’s home-brewed 19nm MLC NAND memory with a separate SLC layer for improved performance for small file writes which has been dubbed as nCache.

This in-house production of memory is an obvious advantage for SanDisk and it leads to more controlled production costs, however using this particular Marvell controller – the SS889175 – is new to me and it will be interesting to see how well it can keep up with the SF-2281 from SandForce – typically the chip of choice.

SanDisk as I’ve seen before keep the package to a minimum and alongside a product guide and warranty leaflet a drive spacer is put in for installation in larger drive cages.