With their Q300 Toshiba appears to be blowing for attack in the price war. All Q300 drives feature a highly competitive price tag. At this point it’s obviously the performance question that remains to be answered and we’re curious to find how this drive does in our review.
Model | Toshiba Q300 120GB | Toshiba Q300 240GB | Toshiba Q300 480GB | Toshiba Q300 960GB |
Capacity | 120 GB | 240 GB | 480 GB | 960 GB |
Form Factor | 2.5” | 2.5” | 2.5” | 2.5” |
Controller | Toshiba Alishan – TC58NC1000 | Toshiba Alishan – TC58NC1000 | Toshiba Alishan – TC58NC1000 | Toshiba Alishan – TC58NC1000 |
Memory |
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Throughput |
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Endurance | 30 TBW | 60 TBW | 120 TBW | 240 TBW |
Power Consumption |
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Warranty | 3 Years | 3 Years | 3 Years | 3 Years |
Price |
With the Q300 Toshiba shows their first SSD, which is based on TLC NAND flash memory. Thanks to this choice Toshiba is now able to compete with entry level offerings from Samsung and Crucial. As you might know, TLC memory chips are capable of storing three bits per cell, whereas MLC can only hold two bits. This allows for increased capacity per NAND chip and provides the vendor with more headroom when it comes to pricing, since the production cost is lower.
When it comes to the controller we find Toshibas TC58, or to be even more precise: TC58NC1000GSB-00. Apart from that it has been combined with TH58TET1UDKBAEG NAND flash memory, which, as we already mentioned, is TLC NAND. A closer look at the line-up reveals there are four different models being launched available, where there is a 120GB, a 240GB, a 480GB and a 960GB derivate. A closer look at the bundle you get with the Q300 entry level drives, shows even clearer that Toshiba wants to keep the price low. There is basically only the manual, the warranty terms and a spacer to make drive fit neatly in 9mm 2.5” expansion slots. Apart from that you get three years warranty.