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Real-World Software Performance Testing
PCMark 8 Real-World Software Performance
For details on our real-world software performance testing, please click here.
The measurements in our real-world software tests are reported in seconds, showing the time to completion for each task.
Total Storage Bandwidth
A second or two difference doesn't seem like much, but they pile up over the course of a day. Still, there will be those who decry sub-second deltas as immaterial. I call them Latency Deniers.
The benchmarks in the previous chart group are run three times to ensure accuracy. Each test takes about an hour, so we need about 20 minutes for each set to finish. The chart above shows the performance difference for each drive in throughput, so higher results are more favorable. The S500 falls in the middle of the pack, yielding respectable results. But it's a long way from the Samsung 850 EVO and Crucial MX200.
PCMark 8 Advanced Workload Performance
To learn how we test advanced workload performance, please click here.
With the drives worn down into a steady state condition, Longsys' Foresee S500 trails every other charted drive. Once it's allowed to tap that small emulated SLC cache (given a little more time between each test), the S500 recovers. There, the SSD appears in the fastest group of drives. However, it doesn't stand head and shoulders above the competition.
Latency Test
For me, these latency tests are the most important in our review. Because I spend so many hours on my computer each day, I want the response time between my input and the computer's action to be as fast as possible. We've already established that the S500 is not a good choice under heavy (or even moderate) workloads, so we won't harp on it for low performance in situations it wasn't designed to address.
Under lighter workloads, the S500 is in the best-performing group of TLC-based products. This group also competes with the top SATA SSDs in similar conditions. The emulated SLC layer really does work the way it's supposed to. Our only caveat is that it lulls you into a false sense of the drive's overarching performance picture. Don't take the bait; taxing tasks will overwhelm it.
Notebook Battery Life
For more information on how we test notebook battery life, click here.
The 240GB Longsys S500 fails to match the battery life measurement presented by Adata's SP550, based on the same SM2256 controller. We've also tested Plextor's M6V, featuring similar silicon paired with 15nm Toshiba TLC flash, and it also outperforms the S500.
BAPCo's MobileMark software also measures overall system performance during the battery life test. In that metric, Longsys' S500 falls to the bottom, unfortunately.
