[section_title title=”Closer Look”]Closer Look
Opening the closer look section with the packaging, SanDisk have gone with a red and white/greyscale colour scheme with white text across the red stripe. There is an image of the drive itself in the centre and the packaging also features information regarding model number (Ultra II) and of course the capacity; in this case 240GB.
Accessories wise, the drive itself is 7mm thick so it does come with a spacer which allows installation into notebooks/laptops; this also extends to HDD caddies too. Also included is a SanDisk SSD Dashboard leaflet and it wouldn’t be complete without an instruction manual.
Looking at the drive itself, the Ultra II looks pretty stylish with its all-black plastic shell and red text; this is topped off with SanDisk Ultra II in gold text. Other than the aforementioned stuff, there isn’t much else happening at the front but I will state again for the record; this is the 240GB version.
Powering the Ultra II is a NAND based Marvell controller over a SATA3 (6GB/s) interface which means that the advertised speeds of 550MB/s read and 500MB/s write should be more than achievable. As mentioned earlier, this drive is 7mm but does come with a spacer for installation into notebooks and caddies which gives this drive added flexibility in terms of usage.
SanDisk also uses nCache 2 technology which helps establish reliability throughout the speeds but with the use of multi-page recovery, this gives confidence as programmes on TLC NAND can be somewhat troublesome; not with the Ultra II! All the popular T.R.I.M and NCQ features are also included with this particular drive; pretty standard stuff.
Lastly we have the rear of the drive which features that “white label” sticker with all the relevant information pertaining to model number, brand, serial number, European safety information and of course it’s place of manufacturer; in this case, it’s China.
Overall this drive is light weight, sleek, based on 19mm NAND and of course encompasses SanDisk’s integrity with the design, but how does it perform? Let’s take a look shall we…
