SanDisk Ultra II (240GB) SSD Review

Final Words

Samsung set the bar for TLC SSDs extremely high with the SSD 840 and further raised it with the SSD 840 EVO. Since Samsung set the base level of what to expect from TLC, now every TLC drive will be put directly against Samsung's offerings, and what Samsung taught us is that a TLC SSD does not have to be inferior to an MLC drive. Coming up with something better than Samsung is a massive challenge because Samsung has more control over what they do than anyone else thanks to vertical integration.

If there is one company that has the resources to take on Samsung, that is SanDisk. Despite the pressure, the Ultra II meets the high expectations Samsung set for TLC SSDs. Saying that the Ultra II is faster than the 840 EVO would not be accurate since the two trade blows in our benchmarks, but the truth is that the Ultra II is a tough competitor to the 840 EVO. The same goes for the MX100 – the Ultra II goes head to head with it, and some benchmarks are in favor of the Ultra II while the MX100 excels in others.

There are only two minor shortcomings that I see in the Ultra II. The first one is peak performance, which is not on par with the MX100 and 840 EVO. For very light workloads (web browsing, email, Office, etc.) that is not a concern, but users with heavier workloads (though not heavy workloads, just something more than basic web browsing and email; e.g. gaming and photo editing) may get slightly better performance with the MX100 or 840 EVO.

The other is the lack of hardware encryption. Both the MX100 and 840 EVO support TCG Opal 2.0 and eDrive encryption, so the fact that the Ultra II does not have any form of encryption support cannot go without a mention. Whether that is valuable is totally up to you – eDrive has fairly strict software and hardware limitations and thus is not important for the majority of potential buyers, but if you plan on utilizing encryption now or sometime in the future it is better to go with a drive that has the proper hardware support.

It is clear that SanDisk is going after the MX100 in pricing. The prices are within $10 of each other and due to normal price fluctuations the two will likely switch places on a regular basis. I am inclined to say that the MX100 is still a better buy because not only do you get hardware encryption, you also get higher usable capacities since the MX100 features less over-provisioning compared to the Ultra II (7% vs 13%), so technically the price per gigabyte is lower. Of course, even a small drop in the Ultra II's prices will render the difference negligible at which point it boils down to whether you value SanDisk's SSD Dashboard over the MX100's hardware encryption.

The SanDisk 960GB model, however, is an obvious case because the MX100 tops out at 512GB, so the Ultra II is the best available option (unless you need hardware encryption in which case it is worth it to spend a bit more on the 840 EVO).

All in all, it seems that SanDisk is finally becoming more aggressive on the retail frontier. SanDisk has always been a big name among the OEMs, but I have felt that their retail drives have been a bit like second class citizens. I mean, the Ultra Plus and Extreme II were both good SSDs, but SanDisk never pushed them to the full potential that the drives could have had in the market. But I see a change happening.

The goal of the Extreme Pro was to be the fastest client SATA drive on the market, and it succeeded in that (before the 850 Pro came out, although the two are very close), plus the pricing was fair. With the Ultra II, SanDisk finally has a value drive that is competitive in both price and performance. I am glad that SanDisk is showing more commitment to the retail space because if there is one company that can challenge Samsung and Micron in all aspects, that is SanDisk.