KitGuru KitGuru.net – Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards
The Buffalo Microstation 128GB SSD drive has impressed us today – it has TRIM support, we like the software bundle and also appreciate the extra option of adding a USB 2 connector to the unit itself. This means that it can be easily carried around without the need for an external housing and adapter. We would however have liked to see a 3.5 inch bay supplied for easy fitting into a desktop PC, other makers such as Intel and Kingston supply this with many of their Solid State drives.
In regards to performance, we knew immediately that the JMicron JMF612 based Buffalo drive was going to struggle when compared against the latest Indilinx and Sandforce based controllers. Unfortunately for Buffalo this has been borne out with all of our testing.
This basically means it is down to price and unfortunately this is the kicker … the recommended retail price of around £280 inc vat is placing it directly against drives such as the OCZ Vertex 2E which has a rated 285MB/s-250MB/s read and write – much faster than the 240 MB/s-155MB/s JMicron JMF612 based drive.
We like the Buffalo SSD, it performs well and delivers a great all round experience, I just feel that they will need to drop the price to remain competitive as the controller just doesn't compete with the latest Indilinx and Sandforce based units from other manufacturers.
KitGuru says: Recommended, but only if the price drops.
Discuss in our forums here or just leave a quick comment below.
JMicron controllers really are struggling. When I saw you listed it on the page earlier in the review I was expecting a price around £230, not £280. thats considerably overpriced IMO.
Good review, nice and honest which I like to see. it seems a good unit, but released maybe six months too late to be truly competitive.
Sadly, that seems a little overpriced as you say. Good enough drive by the looks of it, and i love the USB 2 option, really, I wish more would add that. performance is a little lacking just.
I really like buffalo as a company, but i looked at this drive last week as I wanted an SSD and finally found out it had a jmicron controller and knew it would perform much as it did in this review. Is the performance bad? hell no, but compared against the sandforce drives (and OCUK has the vertex 2 for the same price!), its a little of a bad deal. drop it to £230 and it would be a worthwhile purchase.
It is amazing how much this technology has advanced – the Buffalo drive a year ago would have been a class leader.
oh well, but good review, I quite like the drive and the fact it clips apart. those screws are so labourous. Read performance is solid, but write is certainly hindering it a little.
Im glad I found this review, I was going to buy it, for some reason I thought it was an indilinx controller. What a bad move from Buffalo. especially at this price.
Good honest review, thank you.
It seems a solid drive just the pricing needs sorted. OCZ look like good value beside this. Quite an overlooked mistake from Buffalo.
Good product, I like it. Just not so sure about the price. I dont think anyone really NEEDS or notices some of these speed differences, and one or two extra seconds booting up would hardly be a problem 🙂 drop the price by £50.
Sadly the controller is letting it down a little when compared to the newest drives out. Would be tempting if the price was more competitive, it needs to drop significantly in todays market.
Disappointing 🙁
Didnt even know buffalo were selling SSD’s, but yeah, thats way over the odds for what you are getting. those are 2009 prices for a 2009 drive.
It is weird how people complain about these performancve levels when they are insanely high. We all expect so much now from everything.
But its overpriced :p