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PNY might not be the first name that springs to mind when choosing a SSD but the performance of the latest CS2211 points to the fact that maybe they really should be making that final shortlist.
The overall performance of the CS2211 drive is very impressive making good use of the combination of the Phison eight channel controller and Toshiba's 15nm MLC NAND. The sequential read performance is very good, keeping pace with the class leaders we have looked at although its sequential write performance isn't as strong. Random 4K performance at shallow queue depths is outstanding with writes of 86,517 IOPS and reads at a superb 102,376 IOPS. Increasing the queue depth to 4 results in a read IOPS figure of 98,183, which is still very impressive.
The bundled accessories are sparse – all you get in the box is a 2.5mm spacer. After dealing with the likes of Samsung's Magician software, Intel's SSD Toolbox or Crucial's Storage Executive, PNY's Drive Utility is a major disappointment as the only thing it does is to enable firmware upgrades.
The major problem is trying to find one in the UK. The drive is priced at a competitive £60.99 inc VAT which puts it somewhere in the middle of its competitors.
Pros
- Performance, especially 4K IOPS.
- Competitively priced
Cons
- Minimal software support.
- Can be hard to find.
Kitguru says: PNY's CS2211 250GB drive is a worthy addition to any purchase list of SSD's, the only problem is trying to find one at the time of writing this review.
