Toshiba Announces Q300 And Q300 Pro Consumer SSDs
After all the enterprise and OEM drive announcements last month surrounding Flash Memory Summit, we've finally got a new drive to talk about that will be sold directly to consumers and available through retailers. Toshiba's Q300 and Q300 Pro drives are client-focused SATA drives using Toshiba-branded flash and controllers. The Q300 uses TLC flash and has an endurance rating of about 0.23 drive writes per day for three years. The Q300 Pro uses MLC flash and is rated for about 0.34 drive writes per day for five years.
| Toshiba Q300 SATA SSDs | ||||
| Capacity | 960GB | 480GB | 240GB | 120GB |
| NAND | Toshiba TLC | |||
| Controller | Toshiba TC358790 | |||
| Sequential Read | 550 MB/s | |||
| Sequential Write | 530 MB/s | |||
| 4kB Random Read IOPS | 87k | |||
| 4kB Random Write IOPS | 83k | |||
| Endurance Rating | 240TB | 120TB | 60TB | 30TB |
| SLC caching | Yes | |||
| QSBC Error Correction | No | |||
| Active Power Consumption | 5.1W | |||
| Idle Power Consumption | 1.1W | |||
| MSRP | $449.99 | $309.99 | $159.99 | $99.99 |
TLC-based drives require more power for writes, but the idle power rating is quite high and makes the Q300 unsuitable for mobile use.
| Toshiba Q300 Pro SATA SSDs | |||
| Capacity | 512GB | 256GB | 128GB |
| NAND | Toshiba MLC | ||
| Controller | Toshiba TC58NC1000 | ||
| Sequential Read | 550 MB/s | ||
| Sequential Write | 520 MB/s | ||
| 4kB Random Read IOPS | 92k | ||
| 4kB Random Write IOPS | 63k | ||
| Endurance Rating | 320TB | 160TB | 80TB |
| SLC caching | Yes | ||
| QSBC Error Correction | Yes | ||
| Active Power Consumption | 3.3W | ||
| Idle Power Consumption | 125mW | ||
| MSRP | $389.99 | $199.99 | $124.99 |
The Q300 Pro seems tuned for a read-oriented workload, with significantly lower random write performance than the Q300, despite TLC being inherently slower for writes. On the other hand, power consumption is much more reasonable, although the Q300 Pro idle power is still a little behind the competition.
The Q300 Pro is listed as using the same TC58 controller that is in the TLC-based OCZ Trion 100, which bore suspicious similarity to the Phison S10 as seen in the Corsair Neutron XT.
The Q300 is shipping now, and the Q300 Pro will ship later this month, when ordered directly from Toshiba's website. Our review samples are on the same timetable, so look for our benchmarks in a few weeks.