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.

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

PACKAGING AND CONTENTS

As always at the front of the box used by Silicon Power we see a product image, their logo, the model and its capacity and the main product features in the form of small icons.

The specifications and features lists are present at the rear along with a graph showcasing the differences between the standard HDDs and SSDs.

The box contains the S80 480GB SSD, 7mm to 9mm plastic bracket, 2.5" to 3.5" metal mounting bracket and the installation guide.

THE S80 480GB

The S80 is yet another 2.5", 7mm thick SSD so nothing really exciting in the looks department.

The model capacity along with several certification logos is printed on a sticker at the top of the drive.

Just a warranty void sticker can be seen at the base of the drive.

At the rear of the drive we find the typical SATA power and data connectors.

To open the housing you just need to remove 4 Philips screws located on the two sides of the drive (as you can see the bottom end of the PCB is reserved for the flash modules of the 960GB model).

On the opposite side we find a total of eight 64GB Toggle mode MLC NAND flash modules by Toshiba.

Right next to these modules we also find the PHISON PS3108-S8-I controller and a single 512MB NANYA DDR3-1600 SDRAM cache chip.

TEST BED

TESTING METHODOLOGY

   After roughly 6 years of testing sold state drives i have concluded that it's almost impossible for any single benchmark suite to accurately measure their performance and that's why in certain benchmark suites we see amazing read/write performance numbers with some drives while in others things are quite different. The reason behind this is that some benchmarking suites are configured to read and write random chunks of data while others read and write constant (sequential) ones. So that's why i always use a very wide selection of benchmarking suites including AIDA64, HD Tach RW, HD Tune Pro, Crystal Disk Mark, Sisoftware Sandra Pro, AS SSD, IOmeter and ATTO. To get the most accurate results each test gets repeated a total of 6 times with the average performance numbers recorded into our charts.

   Many people made inquiries about the charts ever since the last comparison so once again please do keep in mind that the Charts have the average performance numbers of each drive recorded and not the peak (highest) ones. Also although every single one of these programs can help potential buyers choose the right drive for their needs you should also remember that from any kind of benchmark up to real world usage the gap is not small (and usually most differences will go unnoticed by most people). All tests were performed in a fresh Windows 7 Ultimate x64 installation with every update installed up to January 1st 2015.

TEST RESULTS - AIDA64 / ATTO

TEST RESULTS - HD TACH RW / HD TUNE PRO

TEST RESULTS - SISOFTWARE SANDRA PRO / CRYSTAL DISK MARK X64

TEST RESULTS – AS SSD / IOMETER

CONCLUSION

   As soon as we opened the housing of the Slim S80 480GB and saw that it used the same configuration (controller, NAND) as the Slim S55 model we knew that Silicon Power didn't aim to produce an enthusiast grade SSD with top-tier performance but rather an affordable solution for casual users and gamers. Unfortunately although the PHISON PS3108-S8-I did very well in every test against other brand new drives like for example the 850 EVO by Samsung it did fall way back in IOmeter (4k random writes) and i honestly don't know why that happened since in the case of the Slim S55 we recorded much better results. Obviously IOmeter is not the one test to rule them all but it does matter to people and i can only hope that PHISON will work with Silicon Power to at least bring the S80 at the same level as the S55.

   Price is the one and only thing that is directly tied with the performance, durability and capacity of a drive and with a current price tag set at USD179.99 inside the USA (Amazon.com) the S80 480GB by Silicon Power may not be the fastest in its class but thanks to its quality and 480GB capacity we really think that it's a real bargain. It goes without saying of course that if price is of no concern to you and you want the best possible performance then you are better off with one of the new Samsung 850 drives or a PCIex based SSD. However we can't ignore that the Slim S80 480GB offers a very affordable solution for people looking for a high capacity SSD with very good overall performance and that's why it gets our Golden Award.

PROS

- Build Quality
- Very Good Overall Performance
- 3 Year Warranty
- Current Price (For Some)

CONS

- IOmeter Performance