Although you might not have heard of them, Solidigm is a company that was born in 2020 when Intel sold its SSD and NAND business to Sk Hynix, a South Korean company rooted in the Semiconductor business.
Solidigm is fully owned by SK Hynix, and it specialises in Data Centers and Solid State Drives, including the P44 Pro Series, which it claims are "ultra-fast and power-efficient".
It's form factor M.2 2280, meaning it's 22mm wide and 80mm long. Straight out of the box, it looks impressive - it's labelled up in a way that makes it look black and sleek, and it feels well-made to the touch.
It slots into your PC with ease and runs using a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface, with NVMe 1.4 protocol. It's powered by an SK Hynix Aries controller, the same controller that powers the SK Hynix Platinum P41.
In addition, it runs SK Hynix LPDDR4 DRAM, SK Hynix 176L TLC memory and is secured using AES-256. Although this sounds overly techy, the key takeaway is simple - it's built using some of the most powerful parts SK Hynix has at its disposal, which are simultaneously some of the most efficient and most durable components in the industry.
Solidigm gives a 5-year warranty with the drive, which is apparently good for 750 TBW. This is exceptional, with most competitors offering significantly less. The Samsung 990 Pro for example only offers an endurance of 600 TBW on its 1 TB model.
Solid States are only good for a limited number of writes, and so it's a welcome sight to see Solidigm having developed something that promises it can withstand the test of time.
In an attempt to avoid being overly technical, we carried out three benchmarks.
The first was a Windows Boot Test. To do this, we restarted the machine with Windows installed on it and noted how quickly it booted. Across three tests, the drive restarted and booted up in an average of 10.54 seconds, which is exceptionally quick.
Next, we booted Persona 5 Royal from Steam and found it loaded to the menu in just 5.63 seconds. This is again exceptionally quick, with SATA SSDs managing it in a time closer to 9 seconds.
Finally, we performed a sequential read/write benchmark using CrystalDiskMark. This is a benchmarking tool that is commonly used by end users, and most closely simulated everyday usage.
It manages a read speed of 7109.96 MB/s, and a write speed of 6674.91. MB/s These are exceptionally high speeds, with the read speed surpassing most cheaper or similarly priced drives, and going toe-to-toe with drives like the WD Black SN850X (around 7330 MB/s) and the Seagate FireCuda 530 (7358 MB/s).
The write speed is equally competitive, with the Firecuda being significantly slower in most tests (around 5900 MB/s), and drives like the WD Black SN850X and Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus being marginally quicker (in the region of 6700 MB/s).
One thing to note is that the read and write speeds are actually a little better than advertised, with Solidigm officially claiming 7000 MB/s read and 6500 MB/s write.
There's obviously a lot of variability between computer components, even when they're the same model, so initially I thought I just had a fast drive - a quick look online however showed other people getting similar numbers for their benchmarks.
It, therefore, seems as though Solidigm has just been conservative in their estimates of speed, and this leaves me pleasantly surprised with the results.
Solidigm also offers a lot of software for the P44 Pro, including their Storage Tool, which assists with the management of Solidigm SSDs, and even a firmware updater.
When it comes to buying a hard drive, the question isn't necessarily how good a drive is, but equally how good it is compared to drives of a similar price.
The main competitors in this price bracket are drives like the FireCuda 530, the Samsung 980 Pro, the Kingston Fury, and the WD Black SN850X. All of these drives are in the region of £125 and offer similar specs on the face of it.
When looking at the benchmarks however, it's clear that the Solidigm P44 Pro outperforms most of these drives, and comes on a par with other, more expensive drives like the Samsung 990 Pro - which is only marginally faster for significantly more cost (around £150).
In addition, it's difficult to find drives that offer endurance on this level - with the exception of the FireCuda 530 which admittedly runs for an astounding 5,100 TBW.
The only downside of the drive is the temperature - when under load for long periods of time we did notice the drive hit 79°-81° degrees, at which point it throttled down to around half its speed.
This is something that most drives suffer from, however, the lack of a heatsink hurts the P44 Pro in this aspect. That being said, it's unlikely most users will even notice this unless they're constantly writing tens of gigabytes onto the drive every day as part of their work.
For what its worth, the drive did manage to copy a 50 GB zip file without throttling and additionally managed to overwrite 66 remastered raw photographs (at around 40 MB each) without noticeable throttling, although monitoring software did notice it hit the temperature cap on a few occasions.
The drive is also compatible with PS5, however the lack of a heat sink may be an issue - it's relatively well known that the M.2s in PS5s are prone to overheating, however, I wasn't able to test this myself and didn't find much online to imply anyone else had had an issue either.
Solidigm P44 Pro Verdict: 5/5
The Solidigm P44 Pro is a great drive that stands up against the big boys with no difficulty. It's easy to install, looks good, and appears to be built to last - particularly when you take note of the 750 TBW or 5-year warranty.
There are some minor issues with heat, but this isn't going to affect most users. The simple fact is that this drive is faster than most of its competitors, and almost as fast as some more expensive drives it has no business competing with.
Although we had the 1 TB version, it also comes in a 2 TB model, which is seemingly similar if not a tiny bit faster. A lack of a 4 TB option is a shame but doesn't hamper our opinion of the Solidigm P44 Pro, which is a drive that you'll simply struggle to beat without spending quite a bit more money.
