Patriot Blaze 120GB Low-Cost SSD Review

Introduction

We've already published a trio of reviews covering Patriot's new low-cost SSDs from the Torch and Blaze product series. Today we're wrapping things up with a look at the Patriot Blaze 120GB SSD, a low-cost drive that uses a Phison S9 controller.

The Phison S9 was first launched over a year ago for use in cache SSD products. Patriot doesn't mention the cache aspect in the marketing material, and we've learned that several SSDs using the S9 ship in China, where low-cost SSDs outsell big name products daily.

Both the Torch and Blaze 240GB, and larger capacity models, use the Phison S8 controller designed for mainstream users. The S8 also uses a DRAM buffer to increase performance by caching table data, a map of sorts for the location of your data in relation to the flash cells. Because of this, the Torch and Blaze 240GB products perform significantly faster than the 120GB models.

Specifications, Pricing, and Availability

The Patriot Blaze ships in four capacities. The 60GB and 120GB models both use Phison S9 controllers, a DRAM-less controller built for cache duty. The 480GB models and the 240GB we're testing today both use Phison S8 controllers with a DRAM buffer.

Patriot claims 545 MB/s sequential read performance for the Blaze 120GB we're testing today, and 430 MB/s sequential write speed. Random performance isn't stated, but we'll find that out in our testing today.

Unlike the Torch products we recently reviewed, the Blaze series ships in a full retail package. This does raise the overall cost slightly. We found the Blaze 120GB online for $69.99, and all capacities in the Blaze series include a three-year warranty.

PRICING: You can find the Patriot Blaze 120GB for sale below. The prices listed are valid at the time of writing, but can change at any time. Click the link to see the very latest pricing for the best deal.

United States: The Patriot Blaze 120GB retails for $83.05 at Amazon.

Canada: The Patriot Blaze 120GB retails for CDN$126.92 at Amazon Canada.