Strontium Hawk (240GB) Review
by Kristian Vättö on June 25, 2013 8:00 AM ESTFinal Words
My feelings are two-folded. The drive itself is actually quite good in terms of performance. Performance consistency could be better but on the other hand the pricing justifies the lack in performance compared to the fastest drives. Toshiba is also known for high reliability as they've mainly focused on the enterprise and OEM markets, both of which demand extreme reliability (it's not a coincidence that Apple has chosen Toshiba as one of their SSD suppliers). Normally I'm skeptical about long-term reliability when reviewing a not-so-well-known brand SSD but since this is a 100% Toshiba drive, I'm very confident about the reliability.
| NewEgg Price Comparison (6/19/2013) | ||
| 120/128GB | 240/256GB | |
| Strontium Hawk | $100 | $185 |
| Samsung SSD 840 | $100 | $170 |
| Samsung SSD 840 Pro | $135 | $250 |
| Crucial M500 | $130 | $200 |
| SanDisk Extreme II | $130 | $230 |
| Seagate 600 | $110 | $210 |
| OCZ Vector | $145 | $260 |
As far as the pricing goes, the closest competitor is Samsung's SSD 840, which is slightly less expensive on the 240/256GB model. For lighter workloads, the 840 comes out ahead, but anything more demanding tends to favor the Toshiba/Strontium drive. Strontium also sells their drive for quite a bit less than the Toshiba 256GB model, so that's another point in their favor.
On the other hand, I'm not very happy with how Strontium handled the switch of suppliers. It's rather obvious that if your whole product changes, it should also be renamed in the process. There are numerous ways Strontium could have named the "new" Hawk (Hawk II, Hawk Pro, Hawk Extreme come to mind), but they didn't and I can't understand why. Right now this is not much of a problem anymore as currently Strontium is only shipping the new Toshiba-based Hawk, but this certainly doesn't raise much trust in the company with the future in mind.
Fortunately the Toshiba drive is faster than SandForce in most tests, but actions like these always raise the question: what if Strontium changes the supplier again and the new drive ends up being worse than the old one? The SSD market is mostly dominated by the big brands (Samsung, Intel, SanDisk, Crucial, Toshiba, etc.), so the smaller players can't afford to take many image stains like this. I hope this was just a one-time mistake for Strontium and next time they'll pay closer attention to the product naming.
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karasaj - Tuesday, June 25, 2013 - link
Every time I kept reading that, I kept thinking about how no name suppliers would be bad... hard to remember it's from Toshiba, haha. Good luck to them. Nice review :) Power consumption seems obnoxiously low at load.mcveigh - Tuesday, June 25, 2013 - link
Strontium Hawk is the name of my spirit animal!jmke - Tuesday, June 25, 2013 - link
not the best product name I must admit... might not do well in Benelux ;)http://translate.google.com/?hl=en#nl/en/stront
Pessimism - Tuesday, June 25, 2013 - link
Why poo-poo the manufacturer for taking a stand to end the 1000^3 garbage? Everyone should follow suit and label with formatted capacity.hedleyroos - Tuesday, June 25, 2013 - link
Your use of the word "poo-poo" is ironically funny to people who speak Afrikaans (and probably Dutch and Flemish) since "stront" means "poo". They have zero chance of succeeding in those markets.Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, June 25, 2013 - link
Like I said, it's pretty much useless for a small OEM like Strontium to try and change the industry.piroroadkill - Tuesday, June 25, 2013 - link
It should then say 240GiB...dealcorn - Tuesday, June 25, 2013 - link
OK. Laptops outsell desktops and you were unable to test with HIPM and DIPM enabled and no mention was made of DEVSLP support which is a big deal for any Haswell mobile device. By impairing the relevance of the review to typical use cases, someone properly earns a demerit.You need a Haswell mobile device to test with if you want to maintain relevance to the mainstream market. I would complain to my bosses that you need better hardware support to perform at the level they and readers expect of you.
Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, June 25, 2013 - link
I'll be brutally honest here. Just because we are AnandTech doesn't mean that we have piles of laptops laying around, especially ones that are based on a chip that was released less than a month ago. All reviewers want Haswell-based devices at the moment, the supply is extremely tight. Usually laptops only have a review time of two weeks or so because the same system may be sent to others once it's been returned. Obviously reviewers who are actually going to review the system are the first priority, so it'd be really hard for me to get one because 1) I would only be using it for one test 2) I couldn't send it back anytime soon. In other words, the manufacturer wouldn't get much bang for their marketing $ because they wouldn't get much visibility, which is the reason review samples exist in the first place.I know there's the option of buying one but again, I'll be honest here: It would be around $1000 for just one test. I would definitely take one if Anand paid for it but as far as I've understood, Anand isn't into spending thousands on test equipment (keep in mind that the financial situation isn't all that good for us since it's usually the marketing budgets that get cut when bad times hit, so it's harder for us to get advertisers). There's a ton of stuff I'd love to have as they would really take our SSD tests (especially power related) to a next level but I'm not the one making decisions.
We have talked with Intel and ASUS and asked if there's anyway HIPM/DIPM could be enabled on a desktop system (even via custom firmware) but as far as I know, they are not up for that.
Trust me, I would take a Haswell laptop on a heartbeat if someone gave me one, but I hope you also understand that we don't get whatever we want from manufacturers.
dealcorn - Tuesday, June 25, 2013 - link
Well handled and responsive to my concern. So, BK is telling his team we have a winning hand but we need to release products faster. Anandtech is arguably the premier web site consumers turn to for help understanding how new technology benefits them. Intel, however, makes no effort to ensure you have access to the hardware necessary to explain why consumers should value the new stuff. If Intel is trying to increase the cadence, they should step up their game. If Intel does not understand that, it lessens BK's credibility.