Patriot P210 New low cost SATA SSD with up to 2 TB

Patriot P210 New SATA SSD with up to 2 TB

With the P210, Patriot has launched a new series of SATA Ssds, which is primarily intended to find price-conscious buyers. Storage capacities from 256 GB to 2 TB are available in the usual 2.5-inch form factor for around 30 euros to 190 euros.

The new P210 series is to replace the P200 series introduced a year ago. The press release also mentions a model with 128 GB, but there is no trace of it on the product pages and in retail.

Power below the P200

The performance values according to the manufacturer are lower with a maximum of 520 MB/s reading, 430 MB/s writing and 50,000 IOPS with optional 4K transfers than with the P200, up to 530 MB/s reading and 460 MB/s writing and 90K/80K IOPS for random reading/writing. The 2.5-inch form factor with 7 mm height remains the same as the SATA 3 interface with 6 Gbit/s.

SMI controller and QLC flash?

While Patriot had still provided information on the controller used in the P200, this detail is missing from the data sheets of the new P210. However, retailers talk about the SM2259XT (PDF), a 4-channel controller without DRAM cache from the manufacturer Silicon Motion, which inherits the SM2258XT of the P200 and can also handle QLC-NAND. The fact that QLC-NAND is used at least partially this time is very likely, because the SM2259XT supports a maximum of 16 NAND chips, which is why at least the 2 TB model QLC-NAND with 1 terabit (128 Gbyte) per chip should be used. With currently common TLC memory chips with 512 Gigabit (64 GB) can be realized with this controller only one SSD with 1 TB. The P200 series with TLC-NAND therefore uses a different controller for the 2 TB model with the Maxiotek MAS0902A.

As with many SSD third-party vendors, however, components such as controllers and NAND flash within a series can change over time.

One of the cheapest SSD

With prices of currently 28 Euro, 51 Euro, 92 Euro and 187 Euro the new Patriot P210 even undercuts the already favorable predecessor and ranks among the currently cheapest Ssds in the price comparison.

However, the missing DRAM cache as a potential performance brake as well as the unclear components used and the low IOPS for SATA Ssds should at least be considered before purchasing.

Quality standards left a lot to be desired for test samples

Patriot promises a strict quality control process"for the first-class components", however, has in the past revealed shortcomings in the quality of the end product: Two samples of the Patriot Viper VPN100 (Test) had about an air gap between cooler and controller, which stands in the way of effective cooling. Only the third pattern was repaired. Another test of a Patriot SSD did not occur because a faulty tool had made the SSD unusable during the firmware update.