Reviews 52192 Published by

Hardware Canucks posted a review of the Corsair Neutron 240GB & Neutron GTX 240GB SSDs



Currently, the SSD market has stagnated with every manufacturer trying to beat the competition on price rather than focus upon innovation to differentiate their products. Corsair’s new Neutron and Neutron GTX series dare to do things differently by incorporating a new controller architecture from Link A Media Devices alongside the same aggressive pricing stance that has defined this generation of SSDs.

With a few notable exceptions, the majority of current mass market SSDs are powered by LSI’s SandForce SF2281 controller. This simply due to the SF2281’s combination of excellent performance and stable firmware has shown to be a safe choice for manufactures. Unfortunately, this makes for a rather homogenized industry with most companies’ drives looking very similar those introduced by their competitors. Usually when a new high performance drive is released the only way it can possibly distinguish itself is by the NAND it uses. However, there is only so much a company can do to keep its products from being ‘Just Another SandForce Drive’ (or JASFD as this phenomenon is more commonly referred to as) and even new NAND has a way of finding itself into competitor’s products pretty quickly.

At this point in the game, SandForce based drives are simply too common to be noteworthy. If a company wants to truly push the envelope they have to look for greener pastures elsewhere or risk fading into the background. Luckily, new non-SandForce controllers are starting to trickle on to the marketplace and while opting for one is a bit more risky, the potential rewards are significant. Thankfully, Corsair is not one to shy away from taking a risk and is pushing the envelope here which is precisely why the $210 Neutron 240GB and $240 Neutron GTX 240GB are real stand-outs.
  Corsair Neutron 240GB & Neutron GTX 240GB SSDs Review