Introduction

Team Group is a well-known Taiwanese memory and flash storage maker with a long history of catering to the needs of users from all over the globe. Today, we have for review their T-Force Vulcan 500 GB SSD in the SATA 2.5" form factor.

The Vulcan is a cost-effective SATA drive that pairs a Silicon Motion SM2258 controller with 512 GB of MLC or TLC flash and 512 MB of DDR3. If you are wondering why "MLC or TLC", I noticed that the flash chips are rebranded Samsung 48-layer MLC chips and not TLC as mentioned in all other reviews and on Team Group's product page when I first received my review sample. After contacting Team Group, they clarified that this particular model exists with both MLC and TLC flash, without any visible distinction or significant performance differences. Intrigued, I requested that they send me a TLC version as well for a comparison of both variants in this review, which provides interesting insights.

Priced at only $50 for the tested version, the T-Force Vulcan is one of the most affordable SSDs on the market. It is available in capacities of 250 GB, 500 GB, and 1 TB. Endurance is rated at 60 TB, 120 TB, and 240 TB respectively. All Team Group T-Force Vulcan SSDs come with a 3-year warranty.