Transcend has announced its 4TB MTE250 M.2 SSD featuring PCIe 4.0 x4 speeds alongside long-lasting durability and warranty.
Previously limited to 1TB and 2TB capacities, the addition of a 4TB option brings a welcome bump to capacity, and with it a minor increase in performance. Whereas the 2TB drive reached sequential read and write speeds of 7,100MB/s and 6,500MB/s, respectively, the new 4TB model will hit 7,500MB/s and 6,700MB/s. A handy hike, though the range offers consistent performance across all capacities; neither model could be deemed a slouch.
Moving to what arguably has the biggest impact on daily use, AKA 4K random read and write (or IOPS), of which we get respectively, 530,000 plus 420,000 on the 1TB model, 530,000 plus 420,000 on the 2TB, and 540,000 plus 440,000 with the new 4TB offering.
While these IOPS figures are not the best when comparing them to, say, Samsung’s 990 Pro or Western Digital’s WD_Black SN850X, the Transcend drive does impress with endurance ratings of 780TBW, 1,560TBW, and 3,120TBW for the respective capacities. To get a sense for longevity, this is equivalent to filling these drives to their brim each day non-stop for two years, or 43 per cent of the drives’ capacity each day for five years.
The series operates on an M.2 PCIe 4.0 x4 interface featuring an NVMe 1.4-ready eight-channel controller coupled to 3D TLC NAND flash and DRAM cache.
Finally, Transcend is offering two variants of the 4TB drive, one cooled with a graphene heat spreader (TS4TMTE250S) and another using a traditional aluminium heatsink (TS4TMTE250H). Both drives are available to order from Amazon UK priced from £410 and are backed by a five-year warranty.
