Durham, NC, April 02, 2024 –When it’s time for schools and districts to purchase devices for students and staff, both budget and performance are top concerns. One way to cut on costs might be to configure devices with universal flash storage (UFS) instead of solid-state drives (SSDs), but how might this affect performance? To find out, PT put two sets of Windows 11 Pro laptops to the test: the Lenovo 100w Gen 4 and the Lenovo 300w Yoga Gen 4. In each pair, one laptop had a UFS card and the other had an SSD—otherwise, they were identical. When PT engineers timed how long it took the laptops to complete common education tasks, they found that the devices with UFS delivered performance on par with their SSD-equipped counterparts.
According to the report, “PT performance engineers hand-timed general productivity tasks—including boot times and Microsoft 365 app tasks—and tasks in CoSpaces Edu, Blender, and Labster. We saw that the Lenovo Gen 4 laptops with UFS storage delivered performance comparable to the same laptops with SSDs. Choosing UFS for education devices doesn’t have to mean a downgrade in performance: Our results indicate a consistent experience for learners and education professionals in a variety of scenarios, regardless of storage choice.”