What’s Doing Sony in SSD?

Sony is entering for the first time into SSDs through its subsidiary Sony Electronics Asia Pacific PTE LTD in Singapore announcing the new internal SLW-M for PCs and labtops, a 6Gb SATA 7mm 2.5-inch unit weighing 50 to 60 grams with capacities of 240GB or 480GB, and up to 560/530MB/s respective sequential read and write speeds. Accessories included Spacer which can adapt to 9.5mm thickness.

It includes Garbage Collection, a process to help prepare free space in the internal SSD in advance through data consolidation, other maintenance activities such as Wear Levelling, a function that helps prolong the life of the SLW-M, and ECC function, where the internal SSD is capable of detecting and correcting internal data corruption. The Toolbox also has the S.M.A.R.T function. Encryption has not been added.

The company also offers free access to Acronis True image 2015 HD and Sony SSD ToolBox for managing and saving your data.

These 240GB and 480GB SSDs are now available at Sony Stores at the recommended retail prices of S$139 (the equivalent of US$99) and S$259 (US$185), respectively. You can find better prices for this kind of SSDs.

So why Sony is becoming the 155th SSD maker in the world with a product with common specs and functionalities, with all the components coming from outside incuding the main ones, Phison controller and Toshiba TLC NAND already used by several other SSD manufacturers, and being finally not revolutionary at all?

Maybe it’s a test for Sony as the devices are now for Asia only, not available in America and Europe. But it’s strange to see a company like the Japanese giant entering into a low margin device market full of competitors.

The firm is now only in cameras, portable phones and tablets, music, PlayStation and A/V products, no more in PCs or VAIO notebooks, business sold to Japan Industrial Partners Inc. in 2014, so with no one but PlayStation able to use SSDs.

In storage, Sony is involved in external HDDs and SSDs, LTO tape cartridges, as well as optical discs and archiving systems.

Is the new SLW-M really designed and manufactured by Sony? Maybe it’s just a Sony branded drive coming from outside.

In conclusion, we don’t see Sony becoming in the future a real power in this market. The firm is already in external 500GB to 2TB HDDs and 128GB and 256GB SSDs but never was a big actor in these products.

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