Mushkin Atlas mSATA (240GB & 480GB) Review
by Kristian Vättö on December 16, 2013 1:10 PM ESTFinal Words
It's always good to see innovation from smaller OEMs instead of just the fab and controller IP owners. Mushkin, like most of the OEMs, are at the mercy of LSI/SandForce and fab owners when it comes to product availability. Crucial/Micron has been using 128Gbit NAND in their products for eight months now but none of the standalone SSD OEMs have gotten volume access to it yet, although this should change next year. However, this further reinforces the status and control of NAND fab owners -- when you get access to new technology a year or even longer before the others, you will always have an advantage. The best example is Samsung and their TLC NAND based 840 and 840 EVO because over a year later they are still the only OEM with a TLC SSD, giving them a substantial price advantage.
The Atlas is what you would expect from an mSATA SSD with SF-2281. It doesn't set any records but it's a decent performer. It's a bit unfortunate that the 480GB model is slower than the 240GB one, but I'm pretty confident that this is mostly due to the age and design of SF-2281, not Muskin's implementation.
| NewEgg Price Comparison (12/16/2013) | |||||
| 30GB | 60/64GB | 120/128GB | 240/256GB | 480GB | |
| Mushkin Atlas | $65 | $135 | $107 | $195 | $468 |
| Crucial M500 | - | - | $113 | $176 | - |
| Plextor M5M | - | $75 | $112 | $200 | - |
| Intel SSD 525 | - | $80 | $146 | $290 | - |
| ADATA XPG SX300 | - | $75 | $110 | $200 | - |
Atlas' pricing is fairly competitive but not earth-shattering. Given the NAND shortage issues, it's hard for fabless OEMs to continue the price war we had a couple of years ago. The days are behind when OEMs could buy a huge stock of NAND and get a significant discount -- now getting any stock at all can be an effort.
The 480GB Atlas was the only high capacity mSATA SSD when it was released earlier this year. However, now both Crucial and Samsung have retail mSATA SSDs in 480/500GB flavor as well (Samsung's upcoming 840 EVO mSATA even goes up to 1TB). Crucial's 480GB M500 mSATA isn't listed in the table since NewEgg doesn't have it but you can find it from Crucial's online store for $330. Given that the price difference is nearly $140, it's hard to recommend the Atlas 480GB at the moment. We haven't reviewed the M500 mSATA yet but we'll get to it in January once the CES rumble is over. Our SSD 840 EVO mSATA samples are currently on their way to our test lab and the review should be out before the holidays, so stay tuned for more mSATA related content!
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kwrzesien - Monday, December 16, 2013 - link
Avago to buy storage chipmaker LSI for $6.6 billion:http://www.cnbc.com/id/101275289
MichalSuchyn - Monday, December 16, 2013 - link
Love my job, since I've been bringing in $5600… I sit at home, music playing while I work in front of my new iMac that I got now that I'm making it online(Click on menu Home)http://goo.gl/O9CyBB
CharonPDX - Tuesday, December 17, 2013 - link
Spammer seems to be on the increase here - is there any easy way to report spam comments? (I can't find one.)hojnikb - Monday, December 16, 2013 - link
Yey another sandforce drive -.-Although one interesting point comes from all this...
Sandforce is actually working on fixing trim, which is nice to hear.
Gunbuster - Monday, December 16, 2013 - link
I've got a 240GB Mushkin MSATA in my Precision M4700. Runs like a champ.jrs77 - Monday, December 16, 2013 - link
mSATA is only of interest when talking either about switching storage in your ultrabook or your thin mITX system. For everything else a standard SATA SSD is better in price/performance.And for those ultrabooks or thin-clients performance isn't the first question, but price and silent operation.
So I'd say that this drive pretty much looses on all fronts, especially vs the Cruicial M500 240GB which is available currently for $144.99.
lmcd - Monday, December 16, 2013 - link
Or when talking about the mSATA in a larger notebook as the boot drive.MrSpadge - Tuesday, December 17, 2013 - link
I disagree: outfitting a regular laptop with one mSATA baby and a 1 or 2 TB 9.5mm height 2.5" HDD could be very welcome to power users not wanting 17" laptops with 2 drive bays. But of course these mSATA drives have to be priced competitively - there's no reason for them to cost more capacity.Hrel - Monday, December 16, 2013 - link
Plextor still seems to be the way to go here. Good to see Mushkin offering a legitimate alternative, but Plextor gets my recommendation for now.whyso - Monday, December 16, 2013 - link
Pretty poor drive. The high power consumption kills it in the mobile space.