While we have not hidden our personal preference for this series the numbers do speak for themselves. There is no need to put things in perspective. There is no need to praise its overall value. There is even no need to point out how much performance this drive series has to offer. Instead all we need do is point to the across the board results to show why we have become fond of this series over the past couple months.
We do however feel it necessary to explain exactly how the PNY XLR8 CS2211 is able to do all this and why it quickly became one of our more favorite SSD in recent months. Put simply PNY took the time to do things right. They did not rush on to any bandwagons, they did not rush to be the first on the market with a new controller. They did not even try to win ‘Internet points’ by jumping on any fads. Instead they took the time to judge the merits of the various controllers offered today and choose the one that offered the best blend of performance, value, and stability.
The PHISON S10 controller is a rather impressive controller in that it does things differently. Instead of dedicating CPU cycles to internal housekeeping, it dedicates multiple cores that’s sole job is to ensure that there is free NAND ready and waiting for random writes. Equally important is PNY took the time and spent the money on purchasing some of the best NAND available today. It may not be ‘3D’ and instead planar (aka 2D) NAND but Toshiba’s Toggle Mode NAND is some of the best available today. It may not be cheap, but its abilities more than make up for the added expense.
This combination of excellent NAND with one of the best mainstream orientated SATA controllers available is why the PNY XLR8 CS2211 is such a marvelous drive. A drive that can easily hold its own against similarly priced Samsung, Crucial, Intel, and Toshiba/OCZ drives. As such we have no qualms in not only awarding this series our Excellence and Real Deal award as not every SSD out there is as flexible as this series. For this reason, we highly recommend putting this series on your short, short list of drives before making a final decision. They may not have a NAND manufacture backing but that is not to say they cut corners. Instead they have carefully created a SSD that is worthy of your time and hard earned money.
