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In a sea of SATA SSDs, Team Group’s T-Force Vulcan stands out as an impressive specimen. Its design is simple, yet stylish and flashy. To hide it would be a shame. It’s best suited for display within a gaming or showpiece desktop. And, with Micron’s 3D TLC and Silicon Motion’s SM2258, the Vulcan features a winning component combination too. It’s well rounded and then some.
Still, Team Group’s drive is priced aggressively, so there is value to be had here, undercutting many of the top SATA SSDs available. At under $100, the 1TB model is the best value in the lineup, but the 500GB model we tested is worth considering as well. If you’re looking to upgrade your system with a mainstream SATA SSD, especially one with great looks to go with its performance, Team Group’s T-Force Vulcan is a top pick. That said if you have a motherboard with a slot for it, faster M.2 NVMe SSDs are slipping down in price and can potentially give your build a cleaner look without the need for SATA power and data cables.
The component combo leads to some killer performance results. In testing, it matched or surpassed the Crucial MX500 and Samsung 860 EVO depending on the specific test. It even surpassed the Crucial P1 in PCMark 8, and in sequentially writing hundreds of gigabytes of data in a short period of time. And, it performed as the best SATA SSD yet in the SPEC workstation 3’s storage benchmark, proving its worth as an SSD that can handle even prosumer workloads. On a more basic level, it delivered a user experience that was significantly better than an HDD anyway you look at it.
But the drive has its downsides, too. While the endurance rating surpasses the Crucial MX500 and is almost as good as the Samsung 860 EVO, its 3-year warranty is fairly basic, in line with the WD Blue 3D’s. Also, the SSD Toolbox is a good add on, but we weren’t able to use it to clone our NVMe OS drive to the Vulcan.
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