On this review, we are taking a good look at the HP M700 2.5″ 120GB SATA SSD. It is a sub $30 USD featuring read and write speeds of up to 560 MB/s and 520 MB/s respectively.
Table of Contents
Technical Specifications
The HP M700 is available in two variants: The 120GB and 240GB models. Both features HP’s very own controller and a 2D Planar MLC NAND under a 2.5″ form factor.
| HP EX920 M.2 256GB NVME SSD | |
| Capacity | 120GB (120GB, 240GB) |
| Controller | Dual Core HP controller |
| NAND Flash | 2D Planar MLC |
| Form Factor | 2.5″ (7mm) |
| Sequential Read | 3200MB/s |
| Sequential Write | 1200MB/s |
| Random Read IOPS | 180K IOPS |
| Random Write IOPS | 250K IOPS |
| Warranty | 5 Years |
| TBW | 160TB |
Our unit is again the 120GB variant, with a 560MB/s read and 520MB/s write performance. Warranty is 3 years, which is decent for a 145TB TBW SSD.
Packaging and Accessories
The HP M700 SSD’s packaging is rather simple. It’s just a slim box with with a few notable features printed out of the box.
We got screws for mounting and a quick start guide. No spacer here though which is a shame for those who have notebooks with 9.5mm bays.
Design, Build and Connectivity
The HP M700 SSD is a simple looking 2.5″ drive. It is made out of aluminum so it’s rather light – good for portable devices.
The drive is around 6.6mm thin, posing a small problem for those who have 9.5mm drive bays. A quick fix here is to use double sided tape or anything equivalent to avoid slack.
Overall, the drive appears to be made with quality material.
Test Setup
Our storage device reviews revolves around the use of various storage benchmark tools and real world benchmarks. Our setup fills up the test drive to at least 50% of its capacity. This is done so to negate the FOB (Fresh Out the Box) performance of the drive; ensuring that we are testing the drive near its expected usage. The drive is formatted under NTFS and is attached to its natively supported interface. This is to ensure the system is at its optimal testing state.
Throughput
Throughput performance in MB/s is measured with CrystalDiskMark. First up on the test is the Sequential read and write performance, measured with a block size of 1MB, 1GB transfer size and 32 Queue Depth. This test is more in line with large file transfers; similar to watching a movie.
The second one is the Random 4K read and write performance, measured with a random block size of 4KB, 1GB transfer size and 32 Queue Depth. This test is more in line with small file transfers; similar to transferring installation files and reading game data.
The HP M700 started slow on our sequential benchmark, with the lowest score out of the bunch. At random 4K though, it managed to best two drives at read performance, while write is just so-so.
IOPS
Input/Output Operations per Second is is measured with AS SSD. The Random 4K-64Thrd read and write benchmark is used for this test. Performance is measured with a random block size of 4KB, a 1GB transfer size and 64-thread IO requests. This tests the storage medium’s ability to use Native Command Queuing (NCQ) at higher Queue Depth. A Useful metric for server side applications.
The read and write IOPS performance of the HP M700 is typical of that of a SATA drive.
Access Time
The read and write latency is measured with AS SSD using a 512KB block size. Access Time is just as important as the throughput and IOPS performance of the drive; allowing us to peak into how fast or slow a storage medium can access a given data. Latency is measured in milliseconds.
Access times is also not the drive’s strong suite, with a record high 0.118ms write performance.
Productivity
Our real world performance test consists of 3 file folders containing 6GB worth of text files, images and videos each. The files are copied within the drive using TeraCopy to evaluate the storage medium’s performance. File copy performance is measured in seconds.
The HP M700 scored decently on our real world file copy benchmark. Suffice to say that its copy performance is way better compared to its synthetic benchmark runs.
Final Thoughts
The HP M700 is a good entry level option for those who are looking for a budget yet capable drive. Again, it is not the fastest among the SATA drives we’ve tested, but it is enough for general tasks that the usual end user does.
We kinda wish we had 120GB of usable capacity over 111GB though. It is also only available in 120GB and 240GB variants so those who are looking for a larger capacity budget champ should look elsewhere.
The HP M700 retails for around 1600 Pesos or about $30 USD. A good storage device to start your investment on a solid state drive.
HP M700 SSD
Summary
The HP M700 retails for around 1600 Pesos or about $30 USD. A good storage device to start your investment on a solid state drive.
 SSD Review){kind=link}