Sandisk Extreme Pro SSD review

Sandisk is best known for its range of SD cards and USB flash drives, but the company also has a history of making solid-state drives (SSDs). However, the Sandisk Extreme Pro SSD‘s specifications look very similar to its predecessor, the Extreme II.

While both the Extreme Pro and Extreme II use 19nm Sandisk MLC NAND flash and a Marvell 88SS9187 controller, the Pro’s NAND flash is allegedly a newer design that packs more cells into the same space while its controller uses newer, updated firmware. It’s odd that the Extreme Pro doesn’t use Sandisk’s 15nm process, but the Extreme Pro does use a newer version of Sandisk’s nCache technology, which treats a small portion of the MLC NAND flash as a buffer for small writes.

Although these changes sound modest, the change in performance was significant. The Extreme Pro was noticeably faster than its predecessor in our large files test, writing them at a very impressive 643MB/s and reading them at 475MB/s, making an overall result of 559MB/s. This makes the Extreme Pro the second fastest SSD we’ve seen in our large file test, second only to the Samsung 850 Pro. The changes to the nCache technology didn’t do the Extreme Pro any favours in our small file test though. The Extreme Pro is certainly no slouch with write speeds of 100.5MB/s and read speeds of 71.3MB/s, but these are surprisingly slower than the speeds achieved by the Extreme II.

Although the results of our small files test is disappointing, the Extreme Pro is backed by an impressively long 10-year warranty, which is the longest warranty of any SSD we’ve seen. Although we have reviewed the 480GB version, 240GB and 960GB versions are available, and all Sandisk Extreme Pro models will come with a 9.5mm brace that lets you fit the 7mm thick 3.5in SATA3 SSD in thicker laptops.

The Sandisk Extreme Pro is a good SSD. Its stonkingly fast large files performance alone make it a good alternative to the 512GB 850 Pro, which costs 55p per gigabyte compared to the Extreme Pro’s 46p. However, the Crucial MX100 still remains the SSD we’d recommend to most people. Although the MX100 is slower at transferring large files, it’s faster at copying small files, and the 512GB version costs just £150, which works out to be a great-value 29p per gigabyte.