INTRODUCTION

   HAPPY NEW YEAR! May 2015 bring happiness, health and success to all of us (and be a lot better than 2014 if possible). Now one of the things i think we all do during the Christmas holidays (myself included) is to check online for the best offers by large superstores like Amazon, Newegg and others either to purchase things as presents for our friends and family or simply to get something for ourselves. The reason I’m mentioning this is because this year i came across many offers regarding solid state drives which didn't really last long so based on that we decided that our first review of 2015 would be of one such product. So today we'll be taking a look at the brand new addition in the Slim line of SSDs by Silicon Power the S80 480GB model.

  Silicon Power Computer & Communications Inc., founded in 2003 by a group of enthusiastic specialists of flash data storage industry. Well dedicated in brand image and product quality, SP has been recognized and well accepted by millions of end-users in more than 100 countries, becomes the world’s leading manufacturer of flash memory cards, USB flash drives, card readers, DRAM modules, solid state disks, and portable hard drives in less than a decade. Headquartered in Taipei, we continuously established various branches throughout the world including Netherlands, Japan, Russia, Mainland China and other emerging market. With superior quality and innovative design, our products stood out in several competitions and awarded Taiwan Excellence and COMPUTEX Design & Innovation Award in 2009 and 2010. Winning trust of global consumers SP holds a record of successive double-digit revenue growth for last seven years. For SP, the product we introduced is not only a digital storage device but also a real promise to create and preserve your most valuable memory in every moment.

   The Slim S80 480GB SSD was announced a couple of months ago so we were quite curious to see what Silicon Power had improved compared to the previous and award winning Slim S70 model. Strangely enough although the Slim S60 and Slim S70 models featured the SF-2281 NAND flash controller by SandForce/Seagate the new Slim S80 features the lower-cost PHISON PS3108-S8-I SATA-to-Flash 8-channel micro-controller also used in the Slim S55 model which we reviewed a while back. Since the PS3108-S8-I controller fully supports technologies such as AES encryption, NCQ/TRIM/RAID, S.M.A.R.T and DEVSLP (Device Sleep) it's quite complete in the features department, however the results of the Slim S55 showed that it falls slight behind when compared to some of the highest end SSD models in the market with controllers by Samsung, SandForce/Seagate and Marvell. Of course PHISON may have tweaked the firmware of their controller since then so let's see what the new Slim S80 480GB SSD by Silicon Power has to offer compared to its immediate competition.