Patriot P300 M.2 NVMe SSD Review: Low Price, No Frills

Patriot’s been on fire lately, releasing some appealing SSDs. The company’s Viper VP4100 is one of the fastest money can buy, and the Viper VPR100 offers solid PCIe Gen 3 performance with some tasteful RGB illumination. But, while these SSDs are great picks for enthusiasts, they're too expensive for those searching for NVMe flash storage on a tight budget. Enter Patriot's P300.

Significantly outpacing SATA competitors, the P300 is the company’s latest M.2 NVMe SSD, offering up multi-GB performance figures thanks to a Phison E13T DRAMless NVMe controller and Kioxia’s latest 96L TLC flash. But while the price is appealing (starting at just $35 for the 128GB model), the P300 falls behind competition in terms of overall value. In short, you won't find it on our list of best SSDs, though that doesn't mean it's not worth considering, especially if you find it on sale.

Specifications

Patriot is offering the P300 in 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB capacities, although the smallest 128GB capacity is not yet available. Patriot prices the P300 at around $0.12-$0.20 cents per GB, depending on the capacity, with our 1TB sample being one of the best values at $120 shipped.

The company rates these SSDs to hit sequential performance figures of 2.1/1.7GB/s read/write and upwards of 290,000/260,000 IOPS read/write in random performance. The smallest capacities take a slight performance hit, however. As an entry-level NVMe SSD, the endurance rating on the P300 is lower than mainstream competitors, but is still more than enough for most users. Patriot backs the P300 by a three-year warranty, too.

A Closer Look

Patriot’s P300 comes in an M.2 2280 form factor. Our 1TB sample is single-sided, meaning all components are on just on side of the PCB to ensure compatibility with mobile devices that have thin size constraints. If you're installing the drive in a desktop and care about aesthetics though, you may want to look elsewhere. The P300 sports a distracting white sticker over an ugly blue PCB on our U.S. version. Those not in the U.S. will receive one with a black PCB and a Silicon Motion SM2263XT NVMe controller. 

Powering our U.S. version is Phison’s PS5013-E13T PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe 1.3-compliant 4-channel SSD controller. This 28nm controller utilizes a single-core Cortex R5 CPU that operates at 667MHz, plus a CoXProcessor to aid with NAND management tasks.

Image 1 of 5

The P300 was built with a DRAMless architecture to reduce manufacturing costs. Without the DRAM on the device, the SSD’s potential performance compared to DRAM-based SSDs is hindered. Phison’s E13T mitigates this a bit with Host Memory Buffer (HMB) support, which lets the controller utilize the host system's memory as a DRAM cache for accelerating the flash translation layer (FTL) interaction, offering improved performance than without this feature.

The controller interfaces with Kioxia’s (Formerly Toshiba Memory) BiCS4 96L TLC NAND flash. At 1TB, our sample features four NAND packages that each utilize four 512Gb dies. They operate at 1.2V and interface with the controller at a speed of 800MT/s.

If the controller gets too hot, there is thermal throttle support to prevent data damage. As well, it boasts end-to-end data protection and Phison’s fourth-gen LDPC and RAID ECC to ensure data integrity. Along with S.M.A.R.T. data monitoring and TRIM, the controller also supports secure erase capability to wipe it clean and has support for APST, ASPM, and L1.2 power saving modes.