Performance: 38 out of 40.
The amount of performance this new series offers is rather impressive. It may not be ‘MLC NVMe’ good, let alone ‘Optane’ good, but we doubt many will consider it anything less than a blazingly fast drive.
Technological Innovation: 17 out of 20
On the one hand this is a Phison E12 reference design… on the other it is certainly not priced like one. Simply put for very little money buyers are getting a ton of performance… and that to us is a great definition of ‘innovation’.
Build Quality & Warranty: 16 out of 20
With good, and proven, NAND backstopped by an excellent controller we doubt many will find fault with this drive from a build quality point of view. By the same token the build design does require NAND ICs on the back of the PCB. That is sub-optimal to say the least. This really is the corner that Silicon Power (and Phision) had to cut in order to get the price down. Of course, with a five-year warranty that makes no mention of total drive writes allowed… it is almost a moot point. If it dies under warranty you are covered. That is nothing to sneeze at.
Value: 20 out of 20
We really can not stress how good a value the P34A80 1TB drive is. It simply smokes the Crucial P1 and Intel 660p QLC based drives and yet costs only a few cents per GB more. Put another way it crushes similarly designed models with a price that is so low it is almost criminal to ignore. Near QLC price-tag with flagship performance… what is not to like?!
Final Score: 91 out of 100
Silicon Power may not be as well known as Crucial, Intel, Samsung, or even Corsair in the enthusiast end of the solid state-drive market… but the P34A80 should rectify that tout de sweet! If they keep releasing incredible value drives like this, companies like Crucial who ‘own’ the value moniker better watch out.
