Thanks to extremely competitive pricing paired with good performance, the Team Group T-Force Vulcan SSD looks like the first SSD that can position itself as an alternative to Crucial's MX500—one of the best-selling SATA 2.5" SSDs on the market. What makes it interesting from a technology perspective as well is that it can come with either MLC or TLC flash.

When I started reviewing my sample I noticed extremely good performance and wondered "what chips are these?". The flash chips have no markings on them that would make it possible to identify them, and every other review and the official wording say it's "TLC". So I dug a little bit deeper and found out that my sample actually uses 48-layer Samsung 3D MLC—like on the Samsung 850 Pro. When I confronted Team Group with my discovery, my [marketing] contacts were just as surprised, but after checking with engineering, they confirmed my findings.

They explained that depending on flash chip supply levels, they're changing the product to use MLC flash—the original product spec remains TLC. They carefully compared performance and tuned the SSD so that there is no significant speed difference between both variants. They also mention that this is the better move than silently switching TLC with much slower QLC, which does happen in the industry, especially with less reputable SSD makers.

I requested a second sample, this time of the TLC version, to validate these claims, and I have to say that I'm positively surprised. All our performance testing shows that both variants are pretty much identical in performance—I would have expected the opposite. Averaged over our whole real-life testing suite, the T-Force Vulcan is one of the fastest SATA drives available, matching the Samsung 850 EVO and 850 Pro and a tiny bit faster than Crucial MX500. Compared to the fastest NVMe M.2 drives there's a roughly 20% performance delta, which is as expected because NVMe drives have a lot more bandwidth available, but are also more expensive. The difference between the MLC and TLC version is around 1% in real-life—negligible.

The T-Force Vulcan shines in its ability to sustain maximum write speed even when huge amounts of data are written. Other TLC-based SSDs achieve their maximum write speeds only for a short time, until their SLC cache is exhausted. Beyond that, they drop the write rate significantly, sometimes to below HDD speeds. This is one argument for why some people prefer MLC, because that technology doesn't suffer from the "TLC write-hole". Looking at our write-intensive testing, there's no significant difference here, either. Both drives achieve around 440 MB/s over the whole duration of the test, which is mighty impressive, especially for a TLC drive.

Priced at $50 for the reviewed 500 GB variant, the T-Force Vulcan is the best 2.5" SSD when it comes to price/performance, beating the Crucial MX500, which held that throne since forever. The Crucial BX500 is a tiny bit cheaper, but lacks DRAM cache, making it a slower option, especially when writing a lot of data. If you are looking for affordable storage, the T-Force Vulcan should definitely be at the top of your shopping list.

Personally, after considering the review's performance numbers, I don't think the whole TLC vs. MLC thing is a big deal for this SSD. It could be relevant for people who expect to write a lot of data to their SSD, which is where MLC's higher endurance could increase longevity. The 500 GB model is rated at 120 TBW, which isn't a lot compared to some other drives, but should be sufficient for 99% of the user base. While store listings won't show which product is which, here's how to tell the MLC version of the T-Force Vulcan SSD apart from the TLC version. Look at the sticker on the bottom of the SSD. If you see a serial number starting with "TM16-", it is the MLC version; if the serial number starts with "AA", it's the TLC version.