The Toshiba Q300 SSD Review: Toshiba Becomes a Retail Brand
by Billy Tallis on February 26, 2016 8:00 AM EST
Our review of the OCZ Trion 100 hailed it as "Bringing Toshiba to the Retail". The Trion 100 was branded as an OCZ drive, but it was almost entirely developed and manufactured by parent company Toshiba as their first non-OEM SSD. A few months later, Toshiba entered the retail SSD market under their own brand with the Q300 and Q300 Pro SSDs. The Q300 is based on the same hardware platform as the Trion 100 and is the entry-level model in Toshiba's retail SSD line.
For long-time followers of the SSD market, OCZ's brand may still be associated with controversy and the factors that contributed to their bankruptcy and eventual acquisition by Toshiba. In the broader consumer market OCZ is relatively unknown. By contrast, Toshiba is a massive conglomerate that has been a household name for decades. Drives like the Q300 are intended to expand the SSD market at the low end and are marketed as alternatives to hard drives rather than replacements for previous SSDs. In that light, it appears that Toshiba's strategy may have been to use the Trion 100's earlier release to make sure everything was working properly before releasing the Q300 to catch the eye of a wider audience.
| Toshiba Q300 SATA SSDs | ||||
| Capacity | 960GB | 480GB | 240GB | 120GB |
| NAND | Toshiba A19nm 128Gb TLC | |||
| Controller | Toshiba TC58 | |||
| 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 |
| Active Power Consumption | 5.1W | |||
| Idle Power Consumption | 1.1W | |||
| Warranty | 3 years | |||
Both the OCZ Trion 100 and the Toshiba Q300 are based around the Toshiba TC58NC1000 controller, Toshiba's custom edition of the Phison S10 controller. Toshiba already manufactures Phison's drives that are sold to many other brands, so selling some under their own brands was a small step. The Trion 100 and Q300 use the same PCB, one that is extremely similar to other Phison drives we have encountered but with some minor differences in component selection. The hardware of the Trion 100 and Q300 differs only in the selection of DRAM: The Trion uses Nanya DRAM where the Q300 has a Micron DRAM chip. Both drives sport the same Toshiba A19nm 128Gb TLC NAND flash in four packages with up to 16 die per package for the 960GB versions.
Left: Toshiba Q300.Right: OCZ Trion 100
As SSDs with TLC flash are primarily geared towards the entry level market, they are developed with a focus on price and capacity balanced against more modest performance. Aside from Samsung's 850 EVO, the current crop of TLC drives are all low-end drives judging by their performance - with the similar Trion 100 among the slowest - and the market is in a race to the bottom trying to offer the lowest cost per gigabyte. However with that said, even our current slowest SSD (the Crucial BX200) is significantly faster than a hard drive. As low-end SSDs close in on hard drive prices, they are making the higher performance and lower latency of SSDs available to a wider range of computers. The Q300's initial MSRP and its current price direct from Toshiba make it clear they're somewhat in denial about its status as a low-end drive, but prices at other retailers are only slightly higher than the Trion 100.
| AnandTech 2015 SSD Test System | |
| CPU | Intel Core i7-4770K running at 3.5GHz (Turbo & EIST enabled, C-states disabled) |
| Motherboard | ASUS Z97 Deluxe (BIOS 2501) |
| Chipset | Intel Z97 |
| Memory | Corsair Vengeance DDR3-1866 2x8GB (9-10-9-27 2T) |
| Graphics | Intel HD Graphics 4600 |
| Desktop Resolution | 1920 x 1200 |
| OS | Windows 8.1 x64 |
- Thanks to Intel for the Core i7-4770K CPU
- Thanks to ASUS for the Z97 Deluxe motherboard
- Thanks to Corsair for the Vengeance 16GB DDR3-1866 DRAM kit, RM750 power supply, Carbide 200R case, and Hydro H60 CPU cooler
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kmmatney - Friday, February 26, 2016 - link
I upgraded my laptop from a Samsung 830 to a SanDisk Ultra II 980GB (TLC + SLC cache) and the Ultra II is noticeably faster in everyday use. Anand reviewed it a while back and it was one of the lower powered drives as well - in fact more efficient than MX100 according to the review.Oyster - Friday, February 26, 2016 - link
I have a radical suggestion, guys. Can you please start review articles with the price comparison? This (price comparison) just seems out of place since the rest of the product attributes are already being compared to the competition on the first page. I often find myself jumping between the first and the last pages just to compare items. Plus there have been times when I have just skipped to the last page just for the price comparison... case in point, some of the ridiculously-priced mechanical keyboards - I know they're not even worth my time at $150.Also, when are you implementing single-page views??? :)
nathanddrews - Friday, February 26, 2016 - link
Hopefully never. If you want single-page, just click "Print This Article":http://www.anandtech.com/print/10084/the-toshiba-q...
aggressor - Friday, February 26, 2016 - link
Is this really considered their first retail drive? What about the Toshiba THNSNH model they released in 2013? I have one of them and it was retail boxed.jjj - Friday, February 26, 2016 - link
You should include PCIe drives in the results as prices are becoming more reasonable and the high end SATA models less appealing.ddriver - Friday, February 26, 2016 - link
Toshiba needs to reevaluate their pricing - 140$ for the 480GB model is far from a good deal considering that for 20$ extra you can get an evo which is significantly faster, has significantly longer warranty period and has 20GB extra capacity.mczak - Friday, February 26, 2016 - link
I wonder how the different Q300 differ and compare to each other?There's two series available: Q300 RG4 (models starting with HDTS7xxx) and Q300 RG5 (HDTS8xxx). The RG5 seems to be newer, I assume different flash (the tested one can be identified as a RG4 in the picture). But for all I know they could have completely different characteristics despite Toshiba wanting to believe you it's all the same...
mczak - Friday, February 26, 2016 - link
I suppose actually flash is going to be the difference - 15nm vs 19nm, so it would be like a Trion 150 (though the Trion 150 had 3 differences vs. the Trion 100, 15nm flash instead of 19nm, newer firmware (with larger SLC buffer), plus a thermal pad for the controller chip, the latter was likely the reason it had faster sustained write performance, and those other differences might not carry over to the Q300 - so there might not be much difference in the end after all).harrynsally - Friday, February 26, 2016 - link
?????? it appears that Toshiba's strategy may have been to use the Trion 100's earlier release to make sure everything was working properly before releasing the Q300 to catch the eye of a wider audience??????Just checked Newegg Trion 100 owner reviews.
44% rated the 120GB drive 1 star and 41% rated the 240GB drive 1 star.
Appears that OCZ SSDs still lack in quality, reliability and performance,
wagon153 - Friday, February 26, 2016 - link
You're taking Newegg reviews serious? Lol. The Kingston V300 has 4 stars and is as bad, if not worse then, old OCZ drives.