Patriot releases another SATA 3 SSD into the consumer arena this morning, this going by the name of the Patriot Pyro. The Pyro follows suit with the few other manufacturers that have recognized consumer apprehension over premium SSD prices and have wisely made use of a more value driven asynchronous (Async) NAND flash memory. These new ‘Async’ SSDs include the OCZ Agility, OWC Electra and Corsair Series 3, all of whom have been evaluated here.

Async SSDs can provide as much as $100 in savings in comparison to a SSD that uses synchronous (Sync) NAND flash memory of the same capacity. The consumer should be aware that the trade-off for value is performance, where Sync SSDs simply provide much faster transfer speeds when moving incompressible data such as pictures, videos and music. This has no affect whatsoever on the play of this media and, in my opinion, the typical consumer simply needs to ask how many times they will be moving their media collections to and from the drive. That is simply what it comes down to. This, then, makes it a more specific question for photographers, video editors and those that work in the media industry however, for the typical consumer, there is really no hard decision in what will be felt most, value or performance.



Link: The SSD Review