OCZ TL100
Our first retail product comes from Toshiba. The OCZ TL100 is the first DRAMless SSD from OCZ, but it comes from a long line of similar Toshiba products that omit the high-speed cache. The company can make controllers and NAND flash, but it does not have the DRAM manufacturing to provide the last piece of the complete vertical integration puzzle--unless it just removes the DRAM component altogether.
Unlike the entry-level products we're testing today, Toshiba is one of the few companies that have released DRAMless SSDs into mainstream performance categories. Sadly, many of these parts sell for premium prices and aren't the best value for informed shoppers.
The TL100 features a Toshiba TC58NC1010 flash controller paired with Toshiba 15nm TLC flash. Of the retail products in this review, the TL100 sports the highest performance specifications for the DRAMless 128GB and 256GB capacity classes. Toshiba spec’s sequential performance at 550 MB/s read and 530 MB/s write. At the time of writing, the OCZ TL100 only ships in two capacities of 120GB and 240GB.
We found the TL100 for as low as $49.99 for the 120GB and $69.99 for the 240GB. Both carry a limited 3-year warranty, but the endurance rating of 30 and 60 terabytes may distress some of our power-user readers. The new TL100 series works with OCZ's SSD software, but you need to download it from Toshiba's OCZ microsite.
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