Zalman S-Series 128GB Solid State Drive Review

Final Thoughts
It is not often we see a company not know for storage at all make an entry in to the storage market.  I think with both the S-Series and the N-Series Zalman has put their foot through the door in a big way.  They are not just releasing a junk product because solid state drives are really popular right now.  They know they can capitalize on the popularity of solid state drives by releasing a quality product to compete with other drives and they really have.

The JMicron JMF616 controller is still a viable option when it comes to solid state drives and that is why Zalman has released 2 solid state drives, one with the JMicron controller and the other with the SandForce controller.  The JMicron controller is rated at 260MB/s read and 210MB/s write.  In many of our tests the results were very close to these speeds.  Obviously testing against drives with a different controller really cannot tell you much about true performance compared to another drive with the same components, but that is all we had for comparison.  This drive is obviously not the fastest out there, but will definitely be an improvement over the normal hard drive you are currently using.

The S-Series drive is available in 32GB, 64GB and 128GB versions.  This gives you a choice depending on what type of system you will be using the drive on.  128GB is more than enough room for an OS drive on a desktop.  This drive does support TRIM, which all SSD’s you see now should.  I also like that this drive does have a miniUSB port on it.  This means you can use it as a portable hard drive if you like.

The only thing I really saw missing with this drive was a 3.5-inch drive adapter for your case.  Most new cases do have 2.5-inch mounting systems, but many old cases and even some new ones do not so it would have been nice to see one included.

Right now the 128GB version of S-Series solid state drive sells for $219 at my favorite online retailer, which is a good price for the performance you are getting.  Overall ThinkComputers gives the Zalman S-Series 128GB Solid State Drive a 9 out of 10 score.

rating9 10 small

Pros:
– Good performance
– Mini USB port
– Price
– TRIM support

Cons:
– No 3.5-inch adapter included

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