SanDisk SSD Plus 240GB

Last-generation technology shows its limitations in a midpriced drive that fails to meet performance expectations

The SanDisk SSD Plus is a low-cost drive originally released back in 2015. That might not sound very long ago, but the market has moved on quite a bit in two years. What might once have seemed like a tempting balance of price and performance now looks very much like a bum deal.

Let’s look at the performance side of the equation first. Spoilt as we are these days, we’ve been taking it more or less for granted that a SATA SSD will approach the maximum read and write speeds supported by the interface. The SSD Plus confounded that expectation, with a dismal sequential write speed of 216MB/sec; we’ve actually seen mechanical drives do better. In the multi-threaded tests too, the SSD Plus placed right at the bottom of the chart.

If the SSD Plus were extremely cheap, this might be something we could live with. After all, the drive still benefits from the near-zero seek time of solid-state drive technology; it will still make Windows feel smoother and more responsive than a traditional hard disk.

Unfortunately, it’s not extremely cheap. At £77, it competes directly with similarcapacity drives from the likes of Adata, SK hynix and Toshiba, any of which will deliver markedly better performance. Consequently, while the SanDisk SSD Plus might have been a perfectly respectable solid-state drive in 2015, in 2017 it makes no sense whatsoever.