Strontium Swift 64GB SSD

Full Review

Available in the market under the "Strontium Ultra-Speed 2.5-inch Swift Series" branding, this 64GB SSD managed to show us once again the speed boost that a Solid State Drive can provide to a computer. That it performs well yet is priced well for an SSD makes it all the better. As we’ve mentioned in storage reviews earlier, an SSD is better than a normal spinning magnetic hard disk drive because it is faster at delivering data to the processor and writing received data.

An SSD is better than a normal spinning magnetic hard disk drive because it is faster at delivering data to the processor and writing received data.

As with most solid-state drives, the Strontium Swift 64GB utilizes MLC NAND flash, can withstand light shocks, does not heat up in operation, and is silent. It looks like a standard laptop HDD, has a 2.5-inch form factor and uses the SATA-2 interface. Its silent operation and low power usage makes it a good candidate for use on high-end desktops/laptops and HTPC (Home Theatre PC) purposes. Compared to today’s mainstream HDDs that consume at least 5 Watts on average, an SSD uses barely half the power while active and less than one-tenth of the power consumption at idle, which takes it into the arena of using just milli-Watts!

Performance
We run tests using the fastest PC components, to ensure performance isn’t held back by bottlenecks. In synthetic benchmarks, read speeds averaged a consistent 183.1 MB/s right across the drive, without a dip in the speed graph. Write speeds averaged a consistent 130.6 MB/s with 3 per cent CPU utilization. We measured a random access time of 0.1 ms and 0.2 ms (milli-seconds) respectively for read and write. In comparison, average desktop drives average 75 MB/s read, 60 MB/s write, and 12 ms random access time.

Real world numbers seen while copying a single large file of 6.42 GB onto the SSD stood at 114.6 MB/s for read speed and 100.61 MB/s for write speed. Copying multiple smaller files (800 files totalling up to 6.36 GB) onto the SSD (write tests again) was almost the same speed at 98 MB/s. Copying multiple small files from one partition to another (intra-disk file transfer speed) was at 55 MB/s..

The performance numbers seen above are really good. Credit for atleast some of this is owed to the Indilinx drive controller that Strontium has wisely used for this drive. The pattern you see with SSDs is that when all else is equal, a higher capacity drive offers higher speeds. The Swift-series is available in capacities ranging from 32GB to 256GB and we’re told that the 128GB variant is available at a price of Rs. 14,900. If you’re a PC-performance enthusiast, the Strontium Swift 128GB drive might be an even better bargain – lower price-per-Gigabyte, and higher speeds. If you’re thinking of taking a plunge into buying an SSD to upgrade your PC and wonder how much the performance difference is when compared to a normal hard drive, take a look at our comparison of the performance of SSD versus HDD drives.

Conclusion
This drive offers 59.63GB of available space, so you might want to use it to boost OS and application performance, while still using a normal HDD alongside for storage large amounts of data. It is priced neck-to-neck (Rs. 9,500) with the Kingston SSDNow V+ 64GB drive, another SSD that elicited a lot of positive comments at the PCW Test Center. This Strontium drive might have grabbed an even higher rating than it already has, if not for being slower than the Kingston in some respects, and the brand not being as widely available. Strontium offers a three-year warranty on this product.

Bottom Line

The Strontium Swift 64 GB Solid State Drive acquits itself well in our performance tests. The price is relatively affordable considering the speed boost you can get from it. Benefits such as low-power consumption and relatively higher ruggedness make it a good choice for laptop users and for desktop PC enthusiasts, as long as capacity offered is sufficient for you.