Transcend Solid State Drive SSD370s 128GB 6Gb/s - Unboxing and Performance Review

Are you looking for an SSD to speed up your gaming laptop or desktop? Are you a photographer who takes a lot of RAW photographs and needs a fast drive that is capable of editing these images quickly? Have a look at Transcend's newest solid state drive, the SSD370S, that's not only pretty fast but also sells comparatively cheaper than its competitors.

Introduction

I work on an Intel i7 powered Asus X550L laptop, which I reviewed a few weeks ago. This is my main workstation on which I work day-in and day-out. Over a period of time, however, its performance started to deteriorate. Since a laptop's processor and RAM upgrade options are pretty limited, I decided to remove its internal 1TB hard drive and upgrade it to a solid state drive. This would not only give me a faster bootup, but would also assist me in performing functions like video editing, image post processing etc much faster. 

After a lot of thought and research, I finally decided to buy the Transcend SSD370S SSD. This is a 6.0 Gb/s SATA III SSD and is capable of 520 MB/s read and 460 MB/s write speeds. This SSD is available in various capacities, I, however, bought the 128GB variant.

Box Contents

1. SSD370s
2. 2.5" to 3.5" mounting bracket
3. 8 screws for the bracket.
4. Quick Installation Guide
5. Warranty Card.
6. Marketing pamphlets

Specifications

*The performance parameter mentioned above is based on a 1TB SSD as scored on CrystalDiskMark. This is a company released performance statistic and may vary depending upon various factors. Please scroll down below to see the actual performance experienced.

Features

An SSD is a storage media, which unlike a traditional hard disk drive does not have any moving parts. It consists of tiny flash drives connected together on a board that's controlled by a controller. Since it does not have any CD/DVD/HDD like moving parts, it is considered to be far more durable and shockproof than a normal traditional storage drive.

This SSD is extremely light weight and makes no noise when running on a computer. As you can see in the video above, the box it came in stated its weight at 58 grams, I, however, found that the actual weight of this SSD is about 12 grams less than that. Also, since there are no parts to be moved on the inside, it consumes much less power when compared to an HDD.

Did you know that an SSD performs at least 3-4 times faster than a normal HDD?

This SSD is extremely thin at 6.8mm. It has an aluminum body with only the SATA and Power connectors visible on the outside. The top area has Transcend logos/branding and the bottom has serial number, model number along with power ratings mentioned. For those who are interested, here's the exact model number for this SSD: TS128GSSD370S.

Installation

Installing this SSD onto a PC or a laptop is a piece of cake. Before physically installing it into your PC, you can either clone your existing HDD onto this SSD and replace them or simply do a fresh installation of an operating system like Windows onto it.

Transcend has its own cloning software available on their website which works like a charm. You can download it from the link mentioned below:

Transcend SSD Scope

If you are planning to install it onto a desktop, the included 2.5" to 3.5" mounting bracket can be made use of. Although, an SSD is extremely light weight and can just be kept on another surface inside the PC cabinet, I highly recommend you to make use of the bracket and install it the correct way.

For testing purposes, I initially installed this SSD onto my desktop computer that runs on an Intel i3 processor. Physical installation was pretty easy, and Transcend's own cloning software easily allowed me to clone the internal HDD under 25 minutes.

Performance

Here's an HD Tune Benchmark result for those interested in its performance:

Transfer Rate

Minimum: 353.4 MB/s

Maximum: 380 MB/s

Average: 368 MB/s

Burst Rate: 108.8 MB/s

Also, don't forget to make note of the temperature of the SSD as noted by the software. With no moving parts and no friction, the overall temperature of your SSD stays pretty low.

CrystalDiskMark result for sequential read/write speeds:

Read: 438.8 MB/s
Write: 161.1 MB/s

Boot up timings

Here's a 'Boot Racer' timer screenshot that displays the time it took for me to cold start my desktop with this SSD installed. The total boot up time it displays is less than 15 seconds. Impressive isn't it?

How to easily & correctly install an SSD on your laptop

After I installed this SSD on my laptop that runs on an i7 processor, the sequential read speed got a bit of a boost. Here are the results of the CrystalDiskMark test I performed.

Read: 514.9 MB/s
Write: 161.3 MB/s

And here is how it performed on an HD Tune test.

Transfer Rate

Minimum: 409.0 MB/s

Maximum: 450.6 MB/s

Average: 444.4 MB/s

Burst Rate: 58.3 MB/s

If you are looking to buy an SSD for yourself, please consider buying it from the links mentioned below to help maintain this website:

Buy from Amazon India: Transcend SSD370S
Buy from Amazon US: Trasncend SSD370S

I hope this article was useful to you. Please let me know in the comments section below if you have any questions and I will try my best to answer them as soon as possible. Please feel free to connect to me via the social media circles mentioned below for regular updates on my blog: