OCZ Trion 100 Series SSD Review

Now firmly in the Toshiba camp, OCZ's Trion 100 Series is the first retail product to ship with Toshiba's new A19 TLC NAND flash.

By Chris Ramseyer
published

Why you can trust Tom's Hardware Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.

Sequential Read

Comparison Units
Corsair Neutron XT (960GB)
Crucial BX100 (1TB)
Crucial M550 (1TB)

To read about our storage tests in-depth, please check out How We Test HDDs And SSDs. Four-corner testing is covered on page six.

Image 1 of 2

The Corsair Neutron XT 960GB uses the closely-related Phison S10 controller with Phison A19 MLC flash; it'll give us a good measuring point to compare MLC to TLC. We have an upcoming piece that compares Toshiba A19 TLC, A19 MLC and Micron L95b MLC with the S10 controller and current-gen firmware, but we can't help but to compare A19 TLC and MLC now while we have the opportunity. 

With that said, all of the Phison S10-controlled drives we've tested with MLC have been top performers in sequential reads. The Trion 100 with A19 TLC isn't able to match the Corsair's Neutron XT 960GB, but it's still faster than the MX200. A better comparison would be to Crucial's BX100 1TB, which uses Micron's 16nm MLC that is cost-competitive with Toshiba A19 TLC.

Chris Ramseyer
Chris Ramseyer
Chris Ramseyer is a Contributing Editor for Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews consumer storage.
10 Comments Comment from the forums
  • jedik1
    "Juliet in the eyes of Romeo"....lol....you guys really need to find better pickup lines.

    IMO. SSD market is overcrowded at the moment. I think better emphasis should not be in performance as more or less all of them perform pretty good. I think more emphasis should be on cost reduction alone. Only when SSDs will be like 1TB~$80-$100 then only we can see wider adoption of SSDs.
    Reply
  • JPNpower
    This drive is perfect and the ideal answer to those low budget builds that frequent the Toms forums. Yes, you can afford an SSD, Yes you can keep that 2/3 year old cheap computer and make it faster... no excuses now.
    Reply
  • "most of it ended up in devices with low endurance like thumb drives and SD cards"

    Can you please elaborate? I was under the impression that thumb drives and SD cards mostly used MLC or eMLC NAND?

    I don't like these 19 and 16 nm chips. You need over-provision and complex ECC algorithms just to correct all the errors the drive outputs after a year or so. The industry is going in the wrong direction, IMO. Samsung has 40 nm 3D NAND, but it would be even better to have that at 65 nm. I don't mind paying 2-3x the price if the endurance is an order of magnitude better.

    Even with RAM, do we really need more capacity over having ECC? Solar flares happen all the time. Data keeps growing and becoming more valuable, this is a real issue. Most people don't even checksum their data!

    I guess if you're playing video games it doesn't matter. But content creators should care.
    Reply
  • Blueberries
    I'm surprised OCZ still exists
    Reply
  • Frozen Fractal
    Shouldn't MX200 be of the competition with Trion than Reactor?
    Reply
  • JPNpower
    16226457 said:
    I'm surprised OCZ still exists

    It doesn't really. It's a company that's been butchered, restructured, and relaunched by Toshiba so really it's quite a new company.
    Reply
  • JPNpower
    16219463 said:
    "most of it ended up in devices with low endurance like thumb drives and SD cards"

    Can you please elaborate? I was under the impression that thumb drives and SD cards mostly used MLC or eMLC NAND?

    I don't like these 19 and 16 nm chips. You need over-provision and complex ECC algorithms just to correct all the errors the drive outputs after a year or so. The industry is going in the wrong direction, IMO. Samsung has 40 nm 3D NAND, but it would be even better to have that at 65 nm. I don't mind paying 2-3x the price if the endurance is an order of magnitude better.

    Even with RAM, do we really need more capacity over having ECC? Solar flares happen all the time. Data keeps growing and becoming more valuable, this is a real issue. Most people don't even checksum their data!

    I guess if you're playing video games it doesn't matter. But content creators should care.

    That's what enterprise products are for. They provide better stability and probably endurance as well. OCZ is a massive player in this field so you should check out their enterprise products. The semi-enterprise Vector 180 is pretty popular.
    Reply
  • Phuntasm
    I really hope this isn't meant to completely replace the Vertex line. Vertex were top of the line performers, while this is just a mediocre blaaah. "It's an SSD." I want to see a Vertex-like headliner, something to compete with the 850 Pro. Either way, where are them PCI-e uber-SSDs?
    Reply
  • JPNpower
    16269842 said:
    I really hope this isn't meant to completely replace the Vertex line. Vertex were top of the line performers, while this is just a mediocre blaaah. "It's an SSD." I want to see a Vertex-like headliner, something to compete with the 850 Pro. Either way, where are them PCI-e uber-SSDs?

    OCZ is building a wide range (yet poorly named...) SSD line. Vertex has always been and always will be the performers. Vector has always been and always will be the semi-pro with kool features. RevoDrive has always been and will be the traditional uber drives. Now Arc is the balanced mainstream, Trion is truly low end, and Radeon is... something else.

    I'm sure Toshiba have something cool M.2 wise up their sleeve. Maybe the Vertex will become M.2 only uber drives, while Radeon takes it's traditional place. Maybe they'll come up with a new name.
    Reply
  • Phuntasm
    Hey, good explanation! I hadn't thought of all the other lines they have. Interesting thought on M.2
    Reply