Conclusion
Announcement: Despite the circumstance that the rating of a product is based on as many
objective facts as possible there are factors which can have an influence on a
rating after publication. Every autor may perceive data differently over time
whereas one possible reason for example is a deeper background knowledge or
understanding of certain processes. Certain unforseen market conditions as well
as changes have the potential to render a descision made at a certain point in
time obsolete.
With their OCZ RD400 M.2 series Toshiba created a new SSD, which addresses enthusiasts and professionals. In our opinion Toshiba succeeded in releasing a new high-performance, enthusiast-grade SSD positioning OCZ as a sub brand and not an individual company anymore. All new NVMe drives these days simply raise the bar in terms of performance to another level and bring the entire enthusiast market a big step forward. Throughput rates in the region of 2'600 MB/s are about four times as much then what’s achievable with SATA-III, which puts these NVMe drives in a entirely different league.
In terms of raw performance our test drive was able to score 1586 MB/s sequential
write and 2'620 MB/s sequential read throughput. When it comes to 4K
IOPS we measured 127'200 IOPS regarding random read and 222'100 regarding random
write. The performance of this drive is simply insane, outperforming the SATA-III standard by a factor of four regarding sequential read.
On another note we also
had a look at performance varying queue depth as you can see on page 10.
In the case of random read performance at QD1 we see 7'800 IOPS and when it comes to random write we measured 30'400 IOPS.
What's always worth mentioning with OCZ drive is their warranty plan. Meanwhile, as a sub brand of Toshiba the it's called Advanced
Warranty and not Shield Plus anymore. The service remains the same. In the event of a drive failure Toshiba will pay for the shipment back and replace the drive without hesitation and the warranty plan lasts for five years.
Today the OCZ RD400 M.2 is available with 128 Gigabyte, 256 Gigabyte, 512 Gigabyte and 1 Terabyte capacity and the MSRP is without PCI Express adapter card are 109.99 US-Dollar, 169.99 US-Dollar, 309.99 US-Dollar and 739.99 US-Dollar respectively. If you'd like to buy the version including the adpater card, you'll have to pay an addiotal 20 US-Dollar. Those drives are definitely not cheap, but considering what you get the price is adequate. The performance is just mindblowing and the NVMe standard helps pushing the boudries of how fast SSDs can be. Should you be an enthusiast or a professional looking for a fast M.2 drive, then we can recommend these drive without a shadow of a doubt.