Ortial’s 120GB m.2 Drive

A while back I reviewed a new offering in the 2.5″ SSD arena. It was from Ortial, who are a lesser known player in consumer SSDs. I found the drive to be functional, reliable, and easy to work with. It also came backed by a TEN year warranty. The speeds were nothing to write home about, but overall I was pleased with the drive

Ortial also offers m.2 drives, and recently they sent me one of their 120GB models (a free unit for review) to test out, the OTM26STT120C m.2 SATA III drive. You can read the datasheet here.

Specifications

• Write Speed: up to 530MB/ SEC
• MTBF: 2,000,000 hours
• Controller:Silicon Motion
• Interface: SATA III (6Gb/ s)
• IOPS: Up to 80,000 IOPS (read)/Up to 70,000 IOPS (write)

Availability

It’s available from Amazon in the UK in 120GB, 240GB, and 480GB sizes for £29.99, £39.99, and £74.48 respectively. It’s also available in a 2.5″ form factor. As far as I can tell whether you order the m.2 or 2.5″ version, it’s the same drive with the same specs. Either way it comes with that awesome ten year warranty.

The drive isn’t available in the US…AT ALL. It’s not on the US Amazon site, and is clearly marked “No Damn Yankees” on the UK Amazon page:

At this point, I may be the only American allowed to have one. I feel special.

So it’s a relatively inexpensive drive, but only if you’re in the UK. But how does it compare to other drives? Obviously installation is exactly the same as any other m.2 drive. No surprises there.

Installation

For testing I decided to use the PorCOOLPine from SimplyNUC. Something I neglected to mention in my review of that NUC: The larger case means a roomier interior.

When you’re seating/re-seating components and plugging in cables, that little bit of extra space makes a big difference.

The drive worked entirely as expected, and I was able to install Windows 10 on it with no issues at all. Installation was fast, and once installed, Windows booted and ran smoothly. No hiccups.

Performance

I ran it through Performance Test to get an idea of its capabilities:

As with the other Ortial drive I tested, the speed isn’t blowing any doors off, but that’s to be expected from a SATA drive. When we compare it to other drives I’ve tested, its performances is…well, decent enough:

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As you can see this drive is a bit faster than an older Intel SSD, nearly as fast as an HDD/Optane combo, and nowhere near as fast as the NVMe drives (duh). I plan to run it in one of my NUCs for a few weeks to see how it holds up. So far, it’s been 100% A.O.K. If that changes, I’ll report back.

Conclusions

I guess I’d classify this drive as a respectable economy SSD. If you’re looking for the fastest m.2 drive out there, this ain’t it. But it also isn’t going to set you back financially. Skip three or four trips to Starbucks, and you’ve got the cash to pick one up.

At under $30, the drive is a steal. And if you’re upgrading from a spinning HDD (what decade do you think this is, anyway?), you will not be disappointed. That ten year warranty doesn’t hurt either!