Toshiba Announces OCZ TR200 Entry-Level SSD

Toshiba just announced the new OCZ TR200 at ChinaJoy (China digital Entertainment Expo & Conference). This is the first retail SSD from the company to utilize BiCS FLASH.

We've tested Toshiba's new 3D NAND 3-bit per cell memory in our preview article featuring the XG5 OEM client SSD. We've also tested the SanDisk branded BiCS FLASH in the new WD Blue 3D and SanDisk Ultra 3D.All three devices performed very well, with the latter two delivering comparable performance to the Samsung 850 EVO SATA SSD.

We don't expect the same level of performance from the entry-level TR200, but it should outperform the other DRAMless SSDs we tested in our 11-Drive Roundup thanks to the faster NAND flash memory.

Specifications And Features

The TR200 will replace the TR150, which was once known as the Trion 150. The new OCZ product lineup does not list the TL100 DRAMless SSD. Toshiba plans to move DRAMless up the product stack and into the value space. (We're sure all of you are thrilled with that news.)

Toshiba's OCZ division tells us the TR200 will ship in three capacity sizes that range from 240GB to 960GB. The drives carry a three-year limited warranty that supports up to 240TB written. The claimed performance reaches up to 550MBps sequential read and 525MBps sequential write speeds. Random performance comes up to 80,000 IOPS read and 87,000 IOPS write. The larger random write speed indicates the drive will use an aggressive SLC buffer to increase performance. It will be interesting to see how the SLC algorithms combat the low performance we've seen in other DRAMless products.

Features

• First Toshiba retail SSD shipping with 64-layer 3-bit per cell TLC BiCS Flash
• Will be the only SATA-based retail product released by Toshiba, and is targeted at entry-level DIY system builders and first time upgraders from HDDs
• Focuses on outstanding price/performance for value-oriented consumers
• Designed to offer both lower power and cost savings to customers without expensive and power-consuming DRAM

The TR200 series is on display at ChinaJoy today and will make an appearance at GamesCom in August. We were told to expect review samples by early Q4 with retail availability to follow this Fall. Toshiba did not announce any pricing details for the new series.

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