G.Skill 64GB SATA II SSD Review

Conclusion

Going into this review we were very excited to see what the future of hard drives would be like, and for better or naught Solid State drives are the way of the future. Take this drive for instance, it is ultra light weight, uses almost no power and yet can trade blows with the best of the best (the Velociraptor) and have a good chance of winning. That’s pretty darn impressive when you think about it. Now impressive or not, we would have really liked to have seen the G.Skill break the 100MB/s barrier as this would have put any doubts about its performance to bed. However, 94MB/s is awfully darn close and with its low random access speed of .3ms it does have a lot going for it.

Unfortunately, not everything is wine and roses with this unit. Fast or not, G.Skill needs to take the time and upgrade the packaging; as this is what will give potential customers their first impression of this. We really have to wonder how many people will take one look at the box, feel how light and cheesy it is and go “huh, I guess they are not ready for prime time yet, or G.Skill would have gone all out!”. Hopefully, not to many will as if you have the money to buy this bad boy its performance will not fail to impress.

Then there is the matter of pricing. At this time it is very hard to justify the price of not only the G.Skill 64GB SSD but of Solid State drives in general. We are sure that as production ramps up, storage size increases and market acceptance grows, the price will begin to fall quite quickly. However, given the performance versus the price and capacity it is very hard to truly recommend going the SSD route right now. The warranty is also a bit of a sticking point since in our opinion by giving this drive a one year warranty G.Skill is showing a lack of confidence in the technology. Let's be honest, one of the main selling points of SSDs is their supposedly long life when compared to platter-based hard drives. So, it is a bit mind-boggling when we see this SSD having a much shorter warranty (one year only) than the majority of hard drives out there.

If you are looking for a replacement hard drive for your laptop this one should be at the top of your list. However, as a PC’s main hard drive it does become a bit more difficult to recommend, as the relatively inexpensive Western Digital Velociraptor is nearly as good but costs about half as much. So unless noise, or using the least amount of power is my main priority, I would rather have a Velociraptor for my main drive, a SE16 640 for my scratch file and two hundred bucks to spend on some other tech goodie. However, there is something so undeniably sexy about this drive that maybe a term like value shouldn't be a factor, and in that case I would be all over this since it makes even the ultra modern Velcoiraptor look pudgy and homely.


Pros:
- Great Performance
- No Noise
- Light weight
- Good Looks


Cons:
- Price
- 2.5” form factor will make it hard to fit properly in PCs
- 1 year warranty