Transcend 240gb Jetdrive 820 For Mac
The JetDrive 825 is made up of two components, a unibody aluminum enclosure with a non-removable Thunderbolt cable and a JetDrive 820 SSD in either a 240,480 or 960GB capacity depending on your needs. For our review, Transcend sent over the 240GB solution which is capable of 700 MB/s read and 550 MB/s write in our Late 13' test system and up to 900 MB/s read if you have a Mid 15' MBPr with its Gen3 interface. The JetDrive 825 is geared towards macOS users but is compatible with Windows systems with a Thunderbolt connection. Current MSRP of the 240GB solution in-house sits at $259.99 with a five-year warranty. Moving over to UHD, we see 733 MB/s read and 560 MB/s write. It took quite awhile for Transcend to finally produce Apple upgrade solutions for devices that used the proprietary PCIe slot Apple introduced in Late 13'. As an owner of a Late 13 MacBook Pro, it's a welcomed addition to the very slim options we have to upgrade the internal drive.
For me, I configured my MacBook with a 512GB SSD from the factory so this 240GB solution isn't an upgrade regarding capacity but rather a slight bump in performance. Also, having the Thunderbolt enclosure is a bonus both for cloning your existing drive along with a place for your old drive to rest after the upgrade is complete. Performance of the drive was on par with marketing claims of 700 MB/s read and 550 MB/s write but we were able to get slightly more at 730 and 580 MB/s in BMD. AJA produced similar results with the UHD workload at 730 by 560 and 1080p managed 625 MB/s read and 425 MB/s write. The included toolbox software works great to check on the health of your drive, enable or disable TRIM and even check the wear level but its absolutely terrible for updating the drive. In the last week of having the drive I have attempted to upgrade the firmware three times and all three times the download was terribly slow reaching only 50% completion after 45 minutes and right after it would fail.
Transcend 240gb Jet Drive 820 For Mac Pro
On top of this issue, the entire firmware upgrade process is messy consisting of formatting flash drives and loading images, rebooting etc. For the general consumer, this to me is way too much, especially when Windows machines can update firmware right within toolbox software. Overall, the Transcend JetDrive 825 is a solid option for those that want a bump in performance or even capacity if your MacBook was originally configured with a small SSD.
I think Transcend will iron out the firmware upgrade issues I mentioned above and after that this drive is certainly one to look at if you are in the market for an all-in-one kit to upgrade your old MacBook Pro. Tyler's Test System Specifications.
Motherboard: ASUS Prime Z370. CPU: Intel Core i3 8350K. RAM: Corsair Vengeance 32GB 4x8GB DDR4 3200. Cooler: Corsair Hydro H115i. Case: Corsair Air 540.
OS Storage: Samsung 960 EVO 250GB. Power Supply: Corsair RM850x. OS: Microsoft Windows 10. Wi-Fi NIC: ASUS PCE-AC88.
Transcend Jetdrive Lite 330 256gb
10Gbe NIC: ASUS XG-C100C. Nyan cat: lost in space for mac torrent. Thunderbolt 3: ASUS Thunderbolt EX3.