Over the past several weeks, we've seen a handful of SSD announcements that focus on faster speeds enabled by supporting the PCI Express 4.0 bus. Patriot will eventually get around to launching a PCIe 4.0 SSD to compete for the best NVMe SSD crown (more on that in a bit), but in the meantime, it's rolling out a new SATA line that is much more affordable.
Patriot's new P200 series comes in 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB capacities. Only the first two are in stock and available to purchase right now, but here's how pricing breaks down for all four:
- Patriot P200 2TB SSD—$239.99, Patriot (~$0.12 per gigabyte)
- Patriot P200 1TB SSD—$110.99, Patriot (~$0.11 per gigabyte)
- Patriot P200 512GB SSD—$49.99, Amazon (~$0.10 per gigabyte)
- Patriot P200 256GB SSD—$31.99, Amazon (~$0.12 per gigabyte)
The 512GB models offers the best value, as it relates the cost per gigabyte, though all four are in a similar range. Pricing is in line with the competition, including Samsung's 860 Evo, which we still consider the best SSD for gaming (from a price/performance standpoint). We'll also have to see how street prices trend over time, as there are quite a few 1TB class SSDs now selling for $100 or less.
Interestingly, Patriot is using two different controllers on this drive series—the SMI 2258XT powers the 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB models, while the 2TB drive swaps it out for a Maxio MAS0902A controller.
Nevertheless, the rated performance specs are the same across the board. All four drives are rated to deliver up to 530MB/s of sequential reads and up to 460MB/s of sequential writes. 4K random read and write IOPS are pegged at up to 90,000 and 80,000, respectively.
These aren't the most exciting drives, but hey, more competition is always good. As for Patriot's PCIe 4.0 models, the company recently told our friends at Toms Hardware that it probably won't have anything this year or even into early 2020. However, it is definitely developing a PCIe 4.0 SSD.
