Final thoughts and rating
G.Skill's Phoenix Pro is one of the fastest, most-affordable 40GB SSDs on the market.
But whilst performance at the £80 price point is excellent, the drive faces stiff competition from a rising number of 60GB alternatives. G.Skill's own 60GB variant is available for only an additional £10, and the rise in capacity lowers the cost-per-gigabyte by up to 25 per cent.
Today's pricing intimates that the 40GB drive is best when paired with another in a RAID 0 configuration. Put two 40GB Phoenix Pro's together in a £160 array and you get significantly better performance than a single 80GB drive.
On its own, the 40GB model has plenty of merit, but it needs to target the sub-£70 bracket in order to better tempt users. As it stands, if you're in the market for a compact SSD to use a system disk or notebook/netbook upgrade, the current crop of 60GB SandForce drives appear to offer a better mix of capacity, performance and value.
The Good
Provides a low-cost route to a super-quick RAID configuration
Excellent read and write performance for £80
Comes bundled with a 3.5in mount
The Bad
Slightly slower than larger SandForce drives
40GB capacity can feel constrained
Costs £2-per-GB
HEXUS Rating
G.Skill Phoenix Pro 40GB
HEXUS Where2Buy
The G.Skill Phoenix Pro 40GB solid-state drive can be purchased from aria.co.uk.
HEXUS Right2Reply
At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.
