Patriot Burst SSD 960GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive 2.5"

Let me start by pointing out the obvious, which is that pretty much any SSD is going to provide a huge performance improvement over a conventional hard drive. This one is no exception. If you're into gaming or have other ultra-high performance computing needs, you've probably researched which SSDs are the very fastest down to the last fraction of a second in benchmark tests. I don't get into that level of performance. All I can offer is that like any SSD, this one will make an old computer feel like a new one, and a new one feel like a much more expensive one.I've only installed one of this particular make and model SSD so far, so I can't comment on how reliable it is compared to others. Again, SSDs as a class tend to be very reliable, far more so than conventional hard drives. I've had a couple SSDs fail, but both were from other brands, and the only pattern shown by two failures out of the dozens of SSD upgrades I've done indicates what I just said, which is that SSDs are very reliable.The only real variable is the "Easy to install" rating. I'm not sure why Amazon put it here, because ease of installation isn't really a feature of a SSD. This type of SSD is a drop-in replacement for a conventional laptop hard drive. However, there are steps you must follow to do this replacement. First, you must know how to make a full image backup of your hard drive, if your intention is to simply upgrade your drive; otherwise, you must know how to do a fresh operating system installation on a new drive and, presumably, copy your data over. I'm not going to get into those procedures here, or the tools and software needed to do it, as this is a review, not a tutorial. Second, if you're upgrading a desktop computer's hard drive, you probably need a suitable adapter to fit a 2.5" drive into a 3.5" drive holder. Finally, some computer manufacturers make it easy to access and replace the hard drive, while others make it quite difficult. In the easiest cases, the drive simply slides out of a door on the side of the computer, allowing you to replace the drive wit no disassembly. On the complicated end, I've worked on some computers where you have to disassemble most of the machine, take out the system board and flip it over in order to replace the hard drive. And that's just the hardware -- I had one situation in which a laptop's storage driver didn't agree with the SSD, and I had to find a different storage driver to make it work properly. So, I gave 3 stars for "Easy to install", but it's necessary to acknowledge that I would give this same rating to any SSD, regardless of make and model, and that most of that is beyond the SSD manufacturer's control.

4 stars drive, but 5th star added for Patriot's Toolbox software.Great for older equipment, you can do better for a few more $$ with newer PC's that can use the boost.Patriot does have a very good downloadable ToolBox that they've been gracious enough to allow some fuctions of the toolbox to work on other, non-Patriot drives. = good SSD's, but other choices may be better. I've installed a 480GB & a 1 TB version of these, the 480 is the OS drive for an older SATA/2 machine, so that PC itself is the limiting factor. It has been flawless in that machine, greatly speeding up it's starting and it's use.The 1TB drive was bought for the OS and storage drive on a gaming PC and it also functioned very well but was the limiting factor when I benchmarked the machine.I had since tried it in two other machines as game storage drives, the first machine benched poorly with it, but the second machine loved the drive and had excellent benchmarks.I had used Patriot's software to wipe the drive before putting it into that last machine so it's possible that's what made the difference.Recommended, but ADATA SU800's and Crucial MX500's have benched better in every modern machine with SATA/3 that I've tried.The ADATA SU800 is usually within a few $ of the Patriot so that's my go-to.

Fast/early delivery. Replacement for 500G HDD in i5, 4GB ram Thinkpad, upgraded from Windows 7. Old drive was laggy with Windows 10 and kept getting errors. Mainly a desktop user for real productivity and Android mobile user for all other light weight tasks, so I didn't need the original space on the device, and decided to go with this smaller cost effective SDD. Boots and shutdowns are quick plus everything runs fast and lag free.

Although some might argue the "DRAM" on this is not the DRAM that we mostly refer to. This is still way much much better than the DRAM-less ADATA SU635 or 655. Good Read Write Speed. And great endurance. I'm using it as a cache for a 4tb WD red in a 2 bay QNAP Nas and so far it is holding up awsome. If you compare this to a samsung 860evo sure it will lose, but please factor in the price. This is at the half price of a 860EVO. So it will be the best budget SSD at the $25 range.