Mtron SSD Pro 7500

Posted 11/14/08 at 04:00:00 PM by David Murphy

Mtron’s SSD Pro 7500 is the first 3.5-inch SSD we’ve tested, and it’s a welcome addition to our rig if for no other reason than its size. We don’t have to fuss with adapters to attach this SSD to our PC. It’s a small thing, but it’s a feature we wish more SSD manufacturers would adopt.

Mtron’s Pro 7500 exceeded our performance expectations on sustained transfer read rates, putting up a respectable showing that was mere megabytes-per-second behind the second-place SSD, Imation’s Pro 7000, and 14 percent behind our speed leader, Memoright’s 64GB SSD. The drive delivered write speeds comparable to the other SLC SSDs, capping out at 84.2MB/s. This synthetic performance was reflected in our real-world tests, with the Mtron Pro 7500 plowing through our Premiere Pro test in 8:17—a minute and change behind the Memoright SSD, but second place nonetheless.

The Mtron Pro 7500 didn’t perform quite as well as we expected in PCMark Vantage, but it still ran just 2 to 4 percent slower than a majority of the SSDs here. We’re confident that the Mtron Pro 7500 would be able to hold its own if you were to use it as a primary drive for your OS.

We were surprised to find Mtron’s SSD using a SATA bridge to connect to an internal ATA-133 interface. While it might add slightly to the cost of the drive, we’d be curious to see whether a true SATA 3Gb/s connection could pull even faster speeds out of this above-average SSD.

Its speeds are good, but the biggest problem with Mtron’s SSD is that its performance doesn’t reflect the $500 price premium separating this SSD from Samsung’s. The Mtron’s read rates are just 8 percent faster than those posted by Samsung’s SSD, and the difference between the two in our Premiere Pro benchmark is a mere 26 seconds. We love performance, but these meager improvements don’t warrant the added cost.