Patriot Warp v2 128GB SSD Review

Conclusion

After working, testing and yes even playing with the Patriot v2 we walked away impressed with it. In most of our tests it was always right up there at the top close to the much more expensive, power sucking Intel X25. All in all it was for the most part a very, very good drive and exceed our expectations in nearly every way. This drive really is a perfect drive for netbooks, desktops and notebooks alike.

Another recurring topic in this review has been the price of the Warp v2. Granted, when compared to spindle drives there really isn't much competition on a value front, it remains ahead of many other SSD. You may not get the same blazing performance as with the X-25M but what you do get is a good jump up from the performance of anything but the highest-end of hard drives and enough storage space for most people.

However, with the good comes the bad as well and unfortunately the v2 has a small Mr. Jekyll side to it. As the testing phase started to draw to a close we became more and more frustrated with the Warp's built in controller. Because of it, we know Patriot's drive is not working to its true potential and we know there is not much we can do about it. This model has been hobbled by the JM602; a controller whose only claim to fame is that it is not as bad as it the controller it replaced. Sorry JMicron (and by proxy Samsung and Patriot for choosing it) but this controller is an albatross wrapped around the neck of one great piece of kit.

As it stands, the drive does need some extensive tweaking done to it and the OS to get the most out of it. However, we feel that the extra work is well worth it and once you have done these tweaks and tricks a few times it actually becomes easy to do. When you are talking about a drive which only costs about (at worst) half as much as the gold standard X25; yet provides more than 50% more room…well there is not much else you can call that drive besides Dam Good Value. We here at HWC are proud to give the Patriot Warp v2 this award as it may not be the absolute fastest out there but it will be good enough for most people. Heck, buy 2 of these, stick them on a used Perc 5i (or other RAID controller with built in cache) and you will easily get better performance than you would have if you went the single X-25M route.


Pros:

- Good Price for 128GB SSD
- Very good performance
- Light Weight
- Silent
- Vibration Resistant


Cons:

- While decent 2 year warranty is still 1 year too short
- Not as good as the X-25 (or spindle drives in certain write tests)
- Potentially slow writes
- Stutter problems which need extensive tweaks to alleviate (but when done make for one great SSD experience)