Patriot Blaze review

Much like the Intel 730 Series of SSDs, the Patriot Blaze range caps out at 480GB in capacity, so isn’t a great choice for those needing ample storage space. There are lower-capacity options, with 60GB and 120GB SSD models available, but we don’t recommend anyone buy an SSD with less than around 250GB space.

The 240GB and 480GB models are more widely available and will be the best choice for most people. These will allow for an operating system installation as well as space for applications and games to really benefit from the faster speeds of solid-state drives.

Both the 240GB and 480GB drives equate to around 35p per GB, which makes the Patriot Blaze a competitor for the very keenly priced Crucial MX100. Like the MX100, the Patriot Blaze uses 16nm MLC NAND, with physically smaller flash chips allowing for more to be packed into the standard 2.5in enclosure. The 16nm manufacturing process also reduces costs. The NAND is paired with a Phison PS3108-S8 controller, which is the same model we have seen used in other inexpensive SSDs.

Both the 240GB and 480GB drives are rated with a read speed of 555MB/s, but the 240GB model has slightly faster-rated write speeds of 535MB/s, compared to the 480GB model’s 500MB/s. When putting the 240GB model through our file transfer tests, we saw a relatively slow large-file write speeds of 423.3MB/s, but an excellent 540MB/s for large-file read speeds. Small-file speeds were only average, however, with a read speed of only 75.9MB/s being a particular disappointment. A small-file write speed of 98.6MB/s is more respectable.

There aren’t any accessories included with the Patriot Blaze. We weren’t expecting an upgrade kit to help migrate your data, especially considering the Blaze’s very reasonable price, but we would have liked to have seen a spacer included to allow you to fit the 7mm drive in laptops that require 9.5mm drives. You also don’t receive any data migration software; the Crucial MX100 comes with a copy of Acronis True Image.

The Blaze is good value, but its disappointing small file performance means it just loses out to the Crucial MX100 for a Recommended award. However, if you’re after a budget SSD, the Best Buy-winning SanDisk Ultra II is better value than both. If you’re looking for the best SSDs then check out our Best SSD 2015 buying guide.