Consistent 256GB SSD Detailed Technical User Review

Ever since launch of Windows 10 and subsequent Windows 11, SSD has become an unofficial necessity of Windows Computers. Matter of fact, even the latest consumer friendly Linux Desktop Operating Systems like Ubuntu or others also benefit heavily from SSD storage based OS Boot drives.

SSD prices are getting cheaper everyday and in recent years, one may notice, most of the latest laptops and pre-build branded desktop computers are coming with SSD storage.

However, many of us, specially in India, may be having an older PC/Laptop with HDD and facing really slow performance with start up time and program launch times. Rather than buying a completely new PC/Laptop, simply changing the storage drive can easily make our older computers feel fresh, snappy and properly usable.

SSD vs HDD

One may wonder what is a SSD and HDD. SSD -> Solid State Drive and HDD -> Hard Disk Drive. You can google and read more about the technical difference between the two but in general user point a view, SSD offers much higher Read / Write speed over a traditional Hard Disk. They look the same but SSDs are much lighter and unlike traditional Hard Disk, there are no spinning or mechanical parts found inside a SSD.

Brand

Seagate / Western Digital (WD) / Toshiba / Samsung / Crucial / Kingstone are some industry leading and well known brands in storage and SSD market. Compare to them, Consistent is relatively a new brand.

Based out of Nehru place of New Delhi, Consistent Infosystems Pvt Ltd is mainly an importer of computer related hardware and peripherals. Read More -> https://consistent.in/about-us/

One of the successful product is their SSD range and here in this review, we are trying out their 256GB SATA-III 6Gbps 2.5inch SSD model CTSSD256S6.

Consistent 256GB SSD
2.5inch 6GB/s SATA-III

Based on storage size, there 3 models of this drive, so let’s take a look at the specifications of Consistent SATA-III SSD models,

We have the 256GB (CTSSD256S6) model with us. This drive is a Made in Taiwan product, imported by Consistent in India.

It’s a standard 2.5inch SATA drive. Like from any other brands with same exact universal size and mounting screw holes or data and power connector. So this drive can be fitted to any laptop or desktop computer having a slot or provision for a SATA 2.5inch drive.

Test Setup

For testing purpose, we have installed this drive in two assembled Desktop PCs running AMD Ryzen 5 1600 with an AMD A320 chipset motherboard & another Intel Core i5 10400 with H510M chipset motherboard, having SATA-III 6gbps connectors. For file transfer purpose, we are using a WB SN570 512GB NVMe SSD Drive to avoid any bottleneck. Both computers are running Windows 11 (and Ubuntu 22 Linux) with 16GB Dual Channel DDR4 RAM.

Unlike many cheap traders of India, importing and rebranding by just slapping a sticker, this consistent drive is detected by Windows or Linux as “Consistent 2.5 SSD 256G”. It is clear that the brand do have some control over the actual Taiwanese OEM manufacturer to include or modify the custom firmware to include their own branding. It looks much professional.

Synthetic Benchmark and Stress Testing

We are running software like PCMark / UserBench and Crystal Disk Mark to compare the synthetic results.

This Consistent 256GB SATA SSD performed very well in the synthetic benchmarks. It scored around 810 points for quick storage test on PC Mark 10. UserBenchMark storage test is ranking it as excellent in comparing to other market leading SATA SSDs. Where as in raw read write performance testing software Crystal Disk Mark, it scored 538 MB/s (read) and 468 MB/s (Write) respectively.

As you can see, overall Read / Write performance is great and almost matching the more costlier top tier brands costing double and triple the cost of this drive.

Real World File Copy (Read/Write) Speed

The product specifications claim to have a read/write speed of 540/500 MB/s respectively but that’s theoretical. To test the actual real world performance, we have formatted this Consistent 256GB SSD in a single partition NTFS file format without any compression. Further we have copied several GBs of data from WD SN570 NVMe to this Consistent SSD and vice versa.

WD SN570 to Consistent SATA SSD -> Write Speed 450 mbps or MB/s
Consistent SATA SSD to WD SN570 -> Read Speed 450 mbps or MB/s

As you can see, Real world read / write performance is really good and same as other known and bigger brands can offer. Both way, actual real world read write speed of this SSD is around 450mbps. We are pretty impressed with this SSD matching the performance levels of other bigger and costlier brands. Compared to a laptop 2.5inch 5400RPM Hard Disk, it’s like 10x faster and at least 5 times faster when compared to a 7200 RPM high cache size 3.5inch desktop Hard Disk.

We have further tested this device by installing Linux (Ubuntu 22) and Windows (Win10x64) and using it as our OS Boot drive with an old Dell Vostro Core i3 Laptop and there too boot time, OS load time, application launch times are very much satisfactory. Earlier, with a 500GB traditional HDD, this same laptop felt completely unusable with really long boot time and sluggish performance with Windows 10 or Ubuntu 22 LTS. However, simply replacing the Hard Disc storage with this SSD makes such a mind blowing difference. The same laptop now feels like a completely different computer. Much snappier and perfectly usable machine for day to day operations.

Negatives -> No TBW Rating / Software Tools

Although, the actual performance is excellent but there are few negatives that we should mention.

For example, Consistent doesn’t mention any TBW ratings for their SSD.

Unlike a traditional HDD, every SSD have limited number of data write cycle. How much total data can be written on a SSD is limited by the quality and specification of the internal hardware. For more information, you can google for TBW (Terabyte Written) and read more. Every major SSD brands mention this value on their product page but strangely, Consistent product information page or their product box have no clue on this.

Further, there are no software tools from the company. Most large brands come with few software tools along with their SSDs. Tools like health checking software, formatting tools and such. Although none of these are actually useful (apart from that health checking tool) for normal home users, but they are like a feature, which is nice to have.

Positives -> Longest Warranty

Consistent SSD may not be having a TBW rating or software tools to check their life span and health but one important thing they do have is the best warranty in the segment.

All of these drives (128/256/512GB) come with 5 years replacement warranty.

Matter of fact, not even the big brands can match this. Undoubtedly, this is the longest warranty in this value segment. For any home user, this is more that enough.

Cost

This is the main advantage of Consistent when compared to other options. As of writing this article, Consistent is selling these excellent SSDs at some aggressively low price.

Our use

Every purchase has a purpose and for us, this SSD is meant to be used with our personal home cloud backup server. You can check out our previous article / video on how to build a home cloud backup server.

We have used an old laptop for the setup. As time went by, many friends and family members started using the server for their backup requirements. So the user count have gone up and that low powered laptop can’t handle the load anymore. We plan to replace that laptop with a more powerful desktop with a faster processor and larger storage. There, we plan to use this SSD as our OS boot drive.

Verdict

Overall, we are really impressed with this product. Specially with the aggressive retail pricing, it feels like steal of a deal. Excellent performance, cheap price with longest warranty -> As a home user, what more can you or I ask?

If you are looking for a SATA interface SSD purchase, you can definitely consider these Consistent SSDs. They are available both online and offline so check and compare their prices before you strike your sweet deal.

Alternatives

In case, if you are thinking its a fluke and cheap price isn’t possible without cheating or compromising on hardware, then there is another Indian brand Geonix International Private Limited is selling their range of Geonix SSDs at similar price point. If you are unable to trust these brands and wishes to pay premium for the known brands, then you may go for few other costlier options as per your choice.

Check out our review of Crucial BX500 Series SSDs -> Crucial BX500 480GB SATA SSD Detailed Technical User Review