Toshiba XG6 NVMe SSD Review: BiCS Flash Puts Up 3GB/Sec Performance
Performance Summary: The Toshiba XG6 SSD was a strong performer throughout our testing and even managed to score a couple of impressive victories against some of the competing drives we threw into the mix. Sequential transfers never led the pack, but the XG6 remained competitive with the Samsung SSD 970 EVO and WD Black. 4K transfers, whether at low or high queue depths weren’t class-leading either, but were competitive nonetheless. And the same can be said about latency, though the XG6 was markedly faster than the XG5 it supplants in Toshiba’s line-up. Where the XG6 did particularly well, however, was with the trace-based PCMark application tests. Here the drive led the pack across the board, not only in terms of its overall score, but in the individual load times, and bandwidth as well. This bodes well for performance expectations with the XG6 in mainstream consumer client workloads.
The XG6 is yet another strong M.2 NVMe solid state drive to come out of Toshiba. This is the first of Toshiba’s solid state drives to leverage 96-Layer BiCS FLASH 3D Flash memory, which offers power, endurance, and performance benefits over previous-generation drives. Looking back through all of the numbers, its performance is competitive across the board as well.We need to reiterate, however, that Toshiba XG6 drives are not destined for the retail channel, but rather are targeted at OEMs and system builders. We don't have official pricing we can share either, but Toshiba's XG5 has trickled into some online retailers and can be found for roughly $.49 per GB (give or take a few cents). We suspect the XG6 will land in a similar pricing segment, and shouldn't result in any hefty premiums being tacked on to the systems the feature the drive. Should you be in the market for a new desktop or notebook and the Toshiba XG6 is an option, we recommend giving it some serious consideration – this is a very nice SSD.
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