G.Skill Falcon II 128GB SSD Review

Conclusion

When all is said and done and all is left to do is tally the butchers bill there is no getting around the fact that G.Skill's Falcon II is a very impressive “mid tier” solid state drive. In many ways, it acts and feels like a high performance SSD with immature firmware and not the more value orientated product it really is. This drive is fast, powerful and should meet and exceed the expectations of nearly any first time customer. In testing, we quickly realized that the combination of 34nm NAND with a newly revised Barefoot controller is both a limiting factor and the biggest reason for this drive’s success. As we saw in some of the synthetic and real world tests the write speeds are limited by this mid tier MLC NAND but that same NAND is still awfully, awfully good in the grand scheme of things.

To be blunt we don’t have any real issues with this drive’s performance. This is not to saythe Falcon II is perfect, as it still is “only” a very good mid-tier SSD, but still a mid tier SSD still beats most hard drives out there. To be honest we really only have one issue with this drive, but it is a big one, and that has to do not with its performance but how it has been packaged and branded. Usually the follow product up to a high-performance drive (in this case the original Falcon) doesn't offer lower performance levels than its predecessor. Unless consumers have really have done their homework, they are naturally going to expect the Falcon 2 to outperform the original Falcon. In anything, we think that the Falcon II should have been named something else instead of labeling a value-oriented drive with a high performance brand name.To us what G.Skill has done is tantamount to OCZ rebranding their “Agility” line to “Vertex 2”.

The only other bone we have to pick is that we would like to see G.Skill follow the lead of companies like Corsair and Patriot by offering a slightly longer warranty on their SSDs. We understand that 2 years seems to be the industry norm but it isn't a norm that we necessarily agree with. When a customer is buying a $300+ drive they want to have confidence the company whose product they purchased stands behind its longevity. As such, two years just doesn't cut it for us.

Names and warranties aside, it seems like G.Skill hit every nail on the head when it came to properly implementing the right combination of performance and value into the Falcon II. It is in our opinion the perfect product for those of you who always wanted an SSD but weren't able to take the plunge due to small capacities and prices that used to be out of most people's reach.


Pros:

- Great packaging
- Good performance
- Native TRIM support
- Good price

Cons:

- Only two year warranty
- Confusing name
- Eco controller is just an updated Barefoot controller