Verbatim 240GB SATA III Review

Verbatim 240GB SATA III Review

Verbatim's SATA III (6GB/s) solid state drive is quite different than the SATA II version. In fact, build quality aside, the Verbatim 240GB SATA III is nearly identical to the Kingston HyperX 3K.

This SSD distinguishes itself from the others with an extremely thick and heavy aluminum enclosure that acts like a giant heat sink for the internal components. In fact, out of all four SSDs in this roundup the Verbatim SATA III was the only one that didn't develop a hot spot that was too hot to touch after hours of repeated benchmarking.

This drive still generates heat, but the heat is spread across the entire surface of the drive rather than being concentrated in a single spot near the center of the drive.

The specifications for the Verbatim 240GB SATA III SSD are as follows:

• Model: 3SSD240 (47379)
• Form Factor: 2.5" (9.4mm thickness)
• Capacity: 240GB
• Memory Type: MLC
• Interface: SATA III
• Controller: SandForce
• Weight: 97g
• Advertised Max Sequential Read: Up to 550 MB/s
• Advertised Max Sequential Write: Up to 510 MB/s
• MTBF: 2,000,000 hours
• MSRP: $200
• Average Retail Price: $180

Performance

The benchmark results for the Verbatim SATA III SSD should come as a surprise to anyone since this is a modern consumer SSD using a SandForce controller. That being said, we were a little perplexed by the fact that CrystalDiskMark reports a sequential write speed that is significantly lower than expected. Granted, CrystalDiskMark is notorious for reporting lower maximum speeds for SSDs (which is why we're also using ATTO) but 160MB/s is even slower than the Verbatim SATA II drive!

Despite this benchmarking anomaly (which we replicated every time we benchmarked the Verbatim SATA III drive with CrystalDiskMark) the ATTO benchmark reveals maximum sequential read and write speeds that are perfectly in line with the manufacturer's claims of 550MB/s (read) and 510MB/s (write).

On a positive note, we found multiple retailers selling this 240GB SSD for around $180 at the time of this writing ... making the Verbatim SATA III SSD one of the most affordable SSDs on the market with SandForce controller (if you don't factor in mail-in rebates or limited-time sales).

Verbatim SATA III 240GB as boot drive benchmarked with CrystalDiskMark.

ATTO results from the Verbatim SATA III 240GB.