techPowerUp posted a review on the Mach Xtreme MX-DS Turbo 120 GB SLC

Mach Xtreme is a relatively young player in the solid storage market, but a lot of their staff are well-known in the memory industry. In this review, we are testing their latest Sandforce SF-2281 based drive that comes with SLC instead of MLC.

The difference between SLC (single-level cell) and MLC (multi-level cell) is that each cell stores multiple bits in MLC, whereas SLC just stores one bit per cell. This makes things more cost efficient with MLC because you can cram more data into the same space. MLC is, on the other hand, more prone to errors, which means that internal error correction has to work extra hard on MLC to ensure data integrity, and that can affect performance. Also, MLC is generally slower than SLC because it requires flash pages (the smallest addressable unit) to be fully programmed and erased, while SLC can break pages up into smaller sections. Last but not least, SLC offers better latency than MLC, which will certainly have a significant impact on our results.

  Mach Xtreme MX-DS Turbo 120 GB SLC Review