Final Words

The Ultra Plus isn't the fastest drive we've ever tested, and most other drives in its price range tend to deliver better performance. Worst case performance consistency isn't great but it's better than Samsung's SSD 840 Pro, so you're going to want to leave at least 25% of the drive free in order to avoid annoying performance variation. The drive's redeeming qualities are basically that it is still a decent performer (way better than a hard drive), and is reasonably low power. The drive PCB itself is very small, potentially paving the way for some interesting, smaller-than-2.5" form factors.

The SanDisk brand likely means something here as well. Any company that has to supply to major OEMs has to have good validation and qualification methods in place, which I'd hope translates into good reliability for the Ultra Plus.

Overall the Ultra Plus is a tough drive to recommend over other similarly priced SSDs simply because it doesn't perform as well as its competitors same price class. If low power is a concern however, the Ultra Plus may fit the bill if you have a niche application. Unlike many SSDs in the past, even though the Ultra Plus isn't the best, it's still better than a hard drive. If you can find one for significantly less than its MSRP and are looking to upgrade a light use system to an SSD, I wouldn't have a problem considering the drive. The trick would be finding an Ultra Plus that's cheaper than the Samsung SSD 840 and the Intel SSD 335, which I'm not sure will happen all that frequently.

Architecturally I'd like to see something more aggressive from SanDisk. Samsung needs another competitor and I believe SanDisk could be that competitor, but it needs to get more aggressive on pursuing performance. SanDisk already has the power side figured out, the question is whether or not it can drive performance up even higher at the same time.

Most of my experiences with SanDisk drives have been in OEM systems, and there I haven't been pleased. OEMs tend to like SanDisk thanks to its very attractive pricing and reliability track record. If the Ultra Plus' controller + firmware combination can make it to SanDisk's OEM client products, I'll be a lot happier.

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