Review on Zheino mSATA SSD 512GB M3 Mini SATA SSD: Reliable Internal Solid State Drive for Mini PC, Notebooks, and Tablets by Jose Strong

What is the difference between mSATA M3 and Q3 versions? In fact, the SSD controller is the same (SM2258XT), but the flash memory chips appear to be Intel in the Zheino Q3 and Sandisk in the Zheino M3. Of the two, the M3 reads slightly faster, but the Q3 writes slightly faster. However, both M3 and Q3 use a DRAM-free design, which means that the write speed under constant write load (e.g. restoring this SSD from a backup) is initially high, but after that it eventually drops to around 28 MB/s for a while for the M3 model and around 38 MB/s for the Q3 model - see attached images. This is slower than MLC mSATA SSDs, which support an end-to-end 110MB/s write speed. However, such long entries are rare in normal use, so it shouldn't matter much. This write speed slowdown should also be less pronounced when there are pauses between writes and when there is unallocated space for redundant provisioning. For comparison, here are the tests of the M3, Q3 and LiteON L9M models, all 128 GB in AHCI mode. So in summary the M3 is a decent build, it's a bit disappointing in terms of sustained write speeds but I think it's still good value for money.