Extreme Pro 480GB

$260 SanDisk

SanDisk is one of the few manufacturers able to use its own memory reserves when building its drives. Unlike Samsung and OCZ/Toshiba it doesn’t also use its own memory controller, but the Marvell controller it does use enables it to fashion its own firmware. The voodoo SanDisk has worked with the Extreme Pro’s firmware makes it the most consistent SATA SSD I’ve ever seen.

You can throw anything at this drive and it will just keep going at the same high speed. No other drive, not even Samsung’s 850 Pro, has come close to being able to maintain such a consistently high score in PCMark8’s extended storage tests.

That makes this consumer-level SSD a drive that would be just as happy in a gamer’s machine as in a professional workstation. So while the MX100 is a great drive for general usage, the Extreme Pro is perfect for the avid game streamer. If you’re recording, streaming and playing from the same drive, you’re shifting data around in large quantities: the Extreme Pro will do that at a consistently high speed and ensure that storage is not a bottleneck. Other drives will lose speed the more you throw at them.

And because the Extreme Pro has been around a while now, its price has come down a long way since its inception. These days it’s only around $40 more expensive than the bargain-priced MX100 and performs at almost identical levels in general usage.

Unless you’re going to be hammering your drive during use, the Crucial is still the one to go for, but if you’re into your streaming, or other more pro-level activities, then the Extreme Pro is a great option.