Longsys Foresee S500 SSD Review
Longsys, the largest SSD manufacturer in China, sent over a new client SSD armed with Toshiba's triple-level-cell NAND flash and a controller from Silicon Motion that you'll be seeing a lot of over the next year.
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Real-World Software Performance Testing
PCMark 8 Real-World Software Performance
For details on our real-world software performance testing, please click here.
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The measurements in our real-world software tests are reported in seconds, showing the time to completion for each task.
Total Storage Bandwidth
A second or two difference doesn't seem like much, but they pile up over the course of a day. Still, there will be those who decry sub-second deltas as immaterial. I call them Latency Deniers.
The benchmarks in the previous chart group are run three times to ensure accuracy. Each test takes about an hour, so we need about 20 minutes for each set to finish. The chart above shows the performance difference for each drive in throughput, so higher results are more favorable. The S500 falls in the middle of the pack, yielding respectable results. But it's a long way from the Samsung 850 EVO and Crucial MX200.
PCMark 8 Advanced Workload Performance
To learn how we test advanced workload performance, please click here.
With the drives worn down into a steady state condition, Longsys' Foresee S500 trails every other charted drive. Once it's allowed to tap that small emulated SLC cache (given a little more time between each test), the S500 recovers. There, the SSD appears in the fastest group of drives. However, it doesn't stand head and shoulders above the competition.
Latency Test
For me, these latency tests are the most important in our review. Because I spend so many hours on my computer each day, I want the response time between my input and the computer's action to be as fast as possible. We've already established that the S500 is not a good choice under heavy (or even moderate) workloads, so we won't harp on it for low performance in situations it wasn't designed to address.
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Under lighter workloads, the S500 is in the best-performing group of TLC-based products. This group also competes with the top SATA SSDs in similar conditions. The emulated SLC layer really does work the way it's supposed to. Our only caveat is that it lulls you into a false sense of the drive's overarching performance picture. Don't take the bait; taxing tasks will overwhelm it.
Notebook Battery Life
For more information on how we test notebook battery life, click here.
The 240GB Longsys S500 fails to match the battery life measurement presented by Adata's SP550, based on the same SM2256 controller. We've also tested Plextor's M6V, featuring similar silicon paired with 15nm Toshiba TLC flash, and it also outperforms the S500.
BAPCo's MobileMark software also measures overall system performance during the battery life test. In that metric, Longsys' S500 falls to the bottom, unfortunately.
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Chris Ramseyer was a senior contributing editor for Tom's Hardware. He tested and reviewed consumer storage.
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kalmquist The Silicon Motion's SM2256 based drives have the dubious distinction of being slower than what came before. I'm hoping that once companies other than Samsung get 3D NAND into mass production, we will see SSD's priced like the Longsys' Foresee S500, but with better performance.Reply
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Jeffs0418 Replywonder how many backdoors they included...
I was thinking the same thing. Just the possibility is a deal breaker for me.
I just hope the (Korean) Samsung 850 EVO I purchased this year (Made in China)
has no unwelcome firmware inside. -
photonboy The PRICE is right where it should be. It doesn't perform as well as slightly more expensive drives.Reply -
photonboy TbsToy,Reply
How do you know there is no support? Do you read Chinese?
These exist in China, so I'm not sure why you would expect to easily find the support site. -
TbsToy Reply16962018 said:TbsToy,
How do you know there is no support? Do you read Chinese?
These exist in China, so I'm not sure why you would expect to easily find the support site.
Well, being in Los Angeles California USA and an English speaking American, I haven't ever felt the need to learn to read and speak Chinese just to be able to communicate with an unfindable Chinese support site for some substandard SSD that might not exist a month from now with a site ya can't even find. I can walk to Intel and with no time, and with no language or communication or warranty or shipment issues back and forth.. So I agree with you cuz ya might not have any usable support like the many SSD vendors have here. That shouldn't deter any potential buyers though, right, cuz it is cheap and ya wanna sell em, Right?
Walt Prill -
hannibal I just have to wonder, if most of the readers actually did read the article. This is not about Longsys, this is about controller, that will be the dominant controller in the next two years. Expect to see these in low price Samsung, Munchkin, Kingston etc ssd drives in near future.Reply