Toshiba Announces Q300 And Q300 Pro Consumer SSDs
by Billy Tallis on September 4, 2015 8:00 AM EST
After all the enterprise and OEM drive announcements last month surrounding Flash Memory Summit, we've finally got a new drive to talk about that will be sold directly to consumers and available through retailers. Toshiba's Q300 and Q300 Pro drives are client-focused SATA drives using Toshiba-branded flash and controllers. The Q300 uses TLC flash and has an endurance rating of about 0.23 drive writes per day for three years. The Q300 Pro uses MLC flash and is rated for about 0.34 drive writes per day for five years.
| Toshiba Q300 SATA SSDs | ||||
| Capacity | 960GB | 480GB | 240GB | 120GB |
| NAND | Toshiba TLC | |||
| Controller | Toshiba TC358790 | |||
| Sequential Read | 550 MB/s | |||
| Sequential Write | 530 MB/s | |||
| 4kB Random Read IOPS | 87k | |||
| 4kB Random Write IOPS | 83k | |||
| Endurance Rating | 240TB | 120TB | 60TB | 30TB |
| SLC caching | Yes | |||
| QSBC Error Correction | No | |||
| Active Power Consumption | 5.1W | |||
| Idle Power Consumption | 1.1W | |||
| MSRP | $449.99 | $309.99 | $159.99 | $99.99 |
TLC-based drives require more power for writes, but the idle power rating is quite high and makes the Q300 unsuitable for mobile use.
| Toshiba Q300 Pro SATA SSDs | |||
| Capacity | 512GB | 256GB | 128GB |
| NAND | Toshiba MLC | ||
| Controller | Toshiba TC58NC1000 | ||
| Sequential Read | 550 MB/s | ||
| Sequential Write | 520 MB/s | ||
| 4kB Random Read IOPS | 92k | ||
| 4kB Random Write IOPS | 63k | ||
| Endurance Rating | 320TB | 160TB | 80TB |
| SLC caching | Yes | ||
| QSBC Error Correction | Yes | ||
| Active Power Consumption | 3.3W | ||
| Idle Power Consumption | 125mW | ||
| MSRP | $389.99 | $199.99 | $124.99 |
The Q300 Pro seems tuned for a read-oriented workload, with significantly lower random write performance than the Q300, despite TLC being inherently slower for writes. On the other hand, power consumption is much more reasonable, although the Q300 Pro idle power is still a little behind the competition.
The Q300 Pro is listed as using the same TC58 controller that is in the TLC-based OCZ Trion 100, which bore suspicious similarity to the Phison S10 as seen in the Corsair Neutron XT.
The Q300 is shipping now, and the Q300 Pro will ship later this month, when ordered directly from Toshiba's website. Our review samples are on the same timetable, so look for our benchmarks in a few weeks.
Source: Toshiba
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bug77 - Friday, September 4, 2015 - link
Weak. There's nothing a SATA SSD can offer today, but better prices. And these do not deliver.Kevin G - Friday, September 4, 2015 - link
Capacity is one area where they can still improve. Many also don't have newer motherboards with M.2 or SATA Express connectors thus legacy SATA is still important.Sure PCIe based SSD's are the future but until the interfaces are common place, then SATA will still be supported.
bug77 - Friday, September 4, 2015 - link
I didn't mean to imply SATA is useless. Just that it's already saturated. Random reads could be improved, but that won't be happening with NAND.Also, there are 2TB SSDs today. But without better prices, you're not going to touch them.
marraco - Friday, September 4, 2015 - link
They could offer emulated RAID0, to use many SATA cables plugged to the same drive, and increase the transfer rate.Wardrop - Sunday, September 6, 2015 - link
What would a manufacturer gain from doing that when any consumer could just raid two drives together?Samus - Friday, September 4, 2015 - link
I like Toshiba drives, and what they've done with OCZ as far as backing them up, but the performance has historically been uncompetitive. Then there is the price.Why do Toshiba drives cost SO much? It's ridiculous. Even 4 year old Macbook 128GB SSD's (Toshiba) sell for $100+ used!
putnegg - Wednesday, September 16, 2015 - link
bought a 120gb Intel ssd on boxing day 2011 for the same price :/Impulses - Friday, September 4, 2015 - link
960GB TLC drive for $450 when the street price of the well established 1TB EVO is $350 (+/- $50)? Good luck with that. The 480GB is even worse off at $310...DanNeely - Friday, September 4, 2015 - link
hopefully these are MSRPs intended solely to let resellers claim 30-50% off all the time.Kevin G - Friday, September 4, 2015 - link
MSRP and actual street prices can differ greatly.