Patriot have been a big contender in the memory market for quite some time and are regarded by consumers to have some of the best memory kits on the market, and with this in mind, it was only right that they would branch out into other market areas and see what the water was like. With the knowledge of memory based products behind them, Solid State Drives would seem to be the next logical step in their plan.

With a market that has so much choice in terms of speed, capacity or a mixture of both, it's a very tough market to crack but Patriot believe they can do it by offering a drive to rival the rest, with one key factor in mind; the price.

Patriot have released a few drives onto their portfolio of products including the Inferno, Torqx 2 and PS-100, though with speed being everything in this day and age, the SATA II interface wasn't strong enough, and this is where the drawing board came back out to develop the next generation of drives, which includes the Wildfire and Pyro. While both drives are based around the SandForce SF-2200 series controller and some of the latest MLC NAND flash memory on the market, some distinct differences can be noticed between the two product ranges. We're not talking about the speed as the difference in that area is very minor, but instead the Pyro is marketed at what's important to the mass market, and that simply comes down to the price.

Finding a drive that can offer a healthy balance of performance and value is always hard to find, and that's the same with any type of product in today's day and age, but Patriot believe the Pyro can keep up with the big boys and do it for a fraction of the cost, so of course, we were keen to get our grubby little mitts on this particular SSD to see if it really can do what it's set out to do.