With their Trion 150 series, OCZ shows their second generation of drives with TLC NAND. Therefore it's rather obvious that OCZ is about to continue the price wars when it comes to budget SSDs. Looking for the controller we find a chip from Toshiba and we're rather curious to find out how this drive does in our review.


Specifications / Delivery

Model	Trion 150 120 Gigabyte	Trion 150 240 Gigabyte	Trion 150 480 Gigabyte	Trion 150 960 Gigabyte
Capacity	120 GB	240 GB	480 GB	960 GB
Form Factor	2.5'', 7 mm	2.5'', 7 mm	2.5'', 7 mm	2.5'', 7 mm
Memory	TLC Toggle NAND 15nm ~1'200 P/E-cycles	TLC Toggle NAND 15nm ~1'200 P/E-cycles	TLC Toggle NAND 15nm ~1'200 P/E-cycles	TLC Toggle NAND 15nm ~1'200 P/E-cycles
Endurance	3 years @ 27 GB/day ~ 30 TBW (	3 years @ 55 GB/day ~ 60 TBW	3 years @ 110 GB/day ~ 120 TBW	3 years @ 219 GB/day ~ 240 TBW
Controller	Toshiba Alishan 4 Channel	Toshiba Alishan 4 Channel	Toshiba Alishan 4 Channel	Toshiba Alishan 4 Channel
Cache	128 MB DDR3	256 MB DDR3	512 MB DDR3	1GB DDR3
Model	Toshiba 15nm - A15 TLC	Toshiba 15nm - A15 TLC	Toshiba 15nm - A15 TLC	Toshiba 15nm - A15 TLC
Throughput	550 MB/s sequential read 450 MB/s sequential write 79'000 IOPS 4K random read 25'000 IOPS 4K random write	550 MB/s sequential read 520 MB/s sequential write 90'000 IOPS 4K random read 43'000 IOPS 4K random write	550 MB/s sequential read 530 MB/s sequential write 90'000 IOPS 4K random read 54'000 IOPS 4K random write	550 MB/s sequential read 530 MB/s sequential write 90'000 IOPS 4K random read 64'000 IOPS 4K random write
Accesstime (read)	< 0.1 ms	< 0.1 ms	< 0.1 ms	< 0.1 ms
Power consumption	0.83W idle 4.8W load	0.83W idle 4.8W load	0.83W idle 4.8W load	0.83W idle 4.8W load
Acoustics	no noise	no noise	no noise	no noise
Warranty	3 Years - Shield Plus	3 Years - Shield Plus	3 Years - Shield Plus	3 Years - Shield Plus
Price

With the Trion 150 OCZ shows their second SSD, which is based on TLC NAND flash memory. The predecessor, the Trion 100, was using 19 nanometer NAND flash memory, wheras the new Trion 150 is now based on 15 nanometer flash. Switching to NAND with a smaller manufacturing process allows a vendor to lower its pricing even further and at the same time realize drives with higher capacity. As you might know, TLC memory chips are capable of storing three bits per cell, whereas MLC can only hold two bits. The increases the capacity per NAND chip and provides the vendor with more headroom regarding pricing as well as capacity.

As with the predecessor also the Trion 150 is using a Toshiba Alishan controller, which goes by the name TC58, or to be even more precise: TC58NC1000GSB-00. Apart from that it has been combined with TH58TET1UDKBAEG NAND flash memory, which, as we already mentioned, is TLC NAND. A closer look at the line-up reveals there have four different models been launched, where there is a 120GB, a 240GB, a 480GB and a 960GB model.

A closer look at the Trion 150's bundle shows clearly that these entry level drives are targeting the entry level segment. Next to the management software SSD Guru, the drives are covered by OCZ's so called Shield Plus warranty. If a customer is under the impression that a drive is defective it can be sent to OCZ. A service technicians will check if the drive is actually damaged or not. Should that be the case, the customer immediately receives a new drive, whereas return shipment costs are being covered by OCZ. In the case of the Trion the Shield Plus warranty last three years.