Corsair P256 2.5” (256GB)
Corsair’s P256 SSD is an excellent product that delivers high capacity and balanced performance. Corsair didn’t try anything tricky, but simply purchased Samsung’s PB22-J SSD and resold it under the Corsair brand. That's good news for enthusiasts, since Samsung's drives aren't usually available on their own at retail.
The P in the model name stands for the performance series. Drives are specified at 220 MB/s maximum read speed and up to 180 MB/s for writes. We measured up to 208 MB/s for reads and almost 180 MB/s for writes, which are great results even though the drive cannot match the performance of Idilinx-powered SSDs. Still, Corsair does well and provides huge capacity. The company also offers SSDs powered by Indilinx hardware in its Extreme Series.
The Performance Series P256 is avialable in 256GB, 128GB, and 64GB capacities. Pricing for the 256GB model starts around $650. If you can live with 128GB, then you’ll get away with a much more palatable $350. Corsair does a responsible and all-too-rare job of providing solid product information, detailing important specifications.
The P256’s I/O performance cannot keep pace with Intel or Indilinx-powered SSDs, as the Samsung drive was delevoped mainly for desktop users. As such, it’s optimized for applications and throughput. Application performance scores well and in the middle of our test bed.
With regard to power consumption, Corsair’s P256 is the real deal, topping out at a mere 0.8W. Other SSDs, such as the Cavalry, went up to 2.3W in certain tests. Corsair’s results are stellar in performance-per-watt for streaming reads (high throughput at low power consumption). It doesn’t shine as brightly in the I/O efficiency summary, but we consider this drive excellent for performance notebooks.
