Does it live up to its datacentre credentials? The consumer solid-state drive (SSD) market has been characterised as a race to the pricing bottom, as manufacturers outdo one another by reducing margins and betting on the price of NAND flash. Such bets can realistically be taken on by those SSD guys who manufacture their own memory; doing so otherwise is fraught with danger.

But not all SSDs are created equal. Newer interfaces such as M.2 and PCIe remove some of the limitations inherent in SATA 6Gbps, notably sequential bandwidth, though many SSDs - composed of controller and NAND flash - are now engineered to meet a specific purpose. Consumer SSDs promulgate sequential speed and low cost, while enterprise drives focus on reliability, quality of service and performance consistency.