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Real-World Software Performance
PCMark 8 Real-World Software Performance
For details on our real-world software performance testing, please click here.
In real-world workloads, the Z400s falls to the bottom of our charts. Every. Single. One. This gives us a good idea of what we can expect from low-end tier-one builds in 2016, particularly when the machines include unnamed SSDs.
Total Storage Bandwidth
This chart coveys the average throughput from all of our real-world tests. There is a big gap between SanDisk's Z400s and Samsung's 850 EVO, which actually sells for less money.
PCMark 8 Advanced Workload Performance
To learn how we test advanced workload performance, please click here.
The Z400s doesn't take a beating from the comparison drives in our recovery tests, at least not by as much as we expected. Without over-provisioning and DRAM, it's harder for an SSD to quickly clean its flash.
Latency Test
For me, the user experience matters more than any other measure of SSD performance. But nobody would care if I just came out and said which SSD I prefer without quantitative data to back me up. Access time tests are the best way to show how responsive any given platform "feels".
It shouldn't come as a surprise that the Z400s isn't a good choice for heavy workloads. The drive is less responsive than two competing models, though really, none of the low-cost SSDs are suited for taxing environments.
Notebook Battery Life
For more information on how we test notebook battery life, click here.
Even with low-power DDR3, DRAM consumes a lot of power in comparison to flash memory. The Z400s without RAM scores one of the best battery life test results we've ever measured. When SandForce launched DRAM-less controllers, we saw the same thing. Over time, performance-hungry vendors simply found ways to reincorporate DRAM and still compete on the power side.
Under battery power, when the system buses are in a reduced power state, all of the SSDs in our chart perform similarly. This means the latency is comparable, as is throughput.
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