Intel's Optane brand has seen a change in focus over the last few years. The chip giant's advanced memory and storage technology is alive and well in data-center servers, but the company has de-emphasized Optane-based memory products in consumer laptops and desktops. (Also, the Intel and Micron marriage to produce the 3D XPoint memory on which Optane is based is coming to an end this year.) Where we once had an assortment of Optane-based hard drive accelerators, and dedicated Optane pure-play SSDs, Optane on everyday PCs is now relegated mainly to OEM implementations, showing up as a component in the occasional major-maker laptop and desktop.

Still, Intel is forging ahead with the next generation of Optane as a storage booster for everyday PCs. We just tested the newest Optane drive for laptops, the H20, launching today, to see if it provides any benefit over the already-speedy SSDs that come standard in most Macs and PCs these days.

First Off: What Is Optane?

Intel discontinued its Optane-only SSDs for consumers earlier this year. This means you can no longer pick one up at a retailer. Instead, your only choice is to find a laptop that can be configured with an Optane H-series hybrid drive. These drives employ a single storage module that combines a small amount of Optane-based memory with a large amount of ordinary SSD storage. 

The combination is designed to make some tasks—such as launching apps and copying small files—even faster than they could be performed on an SSD without Optane technology. This is mostly thanks to the Optane memory portion of the drive, which identifies workloads, programs, and files that might be a good candidate for a speedup, based on your computing behavior. It then acts as a sort of cache to accelerate them. 

The Optane H20, launched late last year, is the only such drive currently available to laptop OEMs. Physically, it looks much like many other gumstick-shaped SSDs that connect to a motherboard’s M.2 slot. But it has two main components mounted to its circuit board: a 32GB Optane memory cache, and either a 512GB or 1TB SSD main storage portion. The latter uses the same storage technology as the Intel SSD 670p, a speedy Editors’ Choice-winning drive in its own right. 

The most confusing part about hybrid Optane drives like the H20 is that the Optane memory portion is completely separate from the laptop’s main memory. The system needs both. The Windows 10 operating system addresses the main system memory as it would on any other machine, while the Intel storage controller engages the 32GB of Optane memory to accelerate specific tasks when it sees fit. As you use your PC, the controller learns which tasks are the best candidates for Optane acceleration and applies them automatically in the future.

Intel once offered entire SSDs that used Optane storage technology, exclusively, with no separate cache. But those drives have been quite expensive, and the company now only offers them for data-center servers and other enterprise environs. With the advent of ever-faster and ever-cheaper storage technology from competing manufacturers like Samsung, as well as the introduction of the blistering-fast PCI Express 4.0 storage interface, pure-Optane drives no longer make as much sense for consumer devices. 

How Fast Is the Optane H20?

But you’ll still be able to configure some laptops with the Optane H20 hybrid drive. We tested its predecessor, the Optane H10, a few years ago, and found that the Optane cache did make some tasks faster, but performance results overall were similar to those of a non-Optane SSD. 

Although the same is mostly true of the Optane H20, it does show some marginal performance improvements over its predecessor. We tested Intel's version with 32GB of Optane memory cache and 1TB of main storage in an HP Spectre x360 15 laptop that Intel sent us. In addition to this laptop, which is available now, Intel expects several more laptops priced in the $600-to-$1,500 range to be available with the Optane H20 this year. 

On all Optane H20 laptops, you can turn off the Optane memory component and configure the H20 as a regular SSD. It’s an easy process that’s accomplished with just a few clicks and a restart using the Optane configuration app. No BIOS access is required. 

Optane’s main advantage is on short, “bursty” tasks that stress a system’s components for a short period of time. They read and write specific pieces of data no matter where they’re stored on the drive, a process known as random access. Intel estimates that 90% of all computing workloads on a consumer PC take this form. It’s different than sequential access, which involves retrieving data bits one at a time in the order in which they’re stored. The Crystal DiskMark benchmark utility can help approximate random access at low queue depths. With its Optane cache enabled, the Optane H20 achieved relatively equal read and write speeds of between 132MBps and 152MBps on the random (4K) test. With the cache disabled, the speeds are lopsided and not as conducive to tasks dependent on random access. The write speed is significantly faster (197MBps), while the read speed is significantly slower (69MBps).

Sequential access at longer queue depths is an important skill for boot drives to have as well. With Optane cache enabled, Crystal DiskMark measured the Optane H20 at more than 3,000MBps read and 2,000MBps write speeds. With Optane cache turned off, the speeds dropped significantly. This is likely more of a compatibility issue with the version of Crystal DiskMark we use than a weakness on the part of the Optane H20. In general, sequential read and write speeds should be the same with or without the Optane cache turned on.  

So what does this mean in real-world use? Launching complex apps like Adobe Photoshop can be a bit faster with the Optane cache enabled, once the cache knows which tasks to focus on. It took 5 seconds to launch Photoshop on the first try, 3 seconds on the second try, and just 2 seconds on the third try. That's evidence that the Optane cache’s learning ability actually works. Compare those results with what we saw from three Photoshop launches while the Optane cache was disabled—all took 3 or 4 seconds. When it comes to copying very large files from one location on the Optane H20 to another, the Optane cache can actually hinder performance. In our test, involving a 76GB video file (significantly larger than the entire 32GB Optane cache) the first transfer took more than 6 minutes, compared with less than two minutes for the first try with the cache disabled. On the second and third tries, the controller remembered that the cache provided no benefit during the large file transfer, and results were much closer to the two-minute mark we saw with the cache disabled.

Should You Buy an Optane Laptop?

While Optane’s advantage at speeding up app launches and other common, random workloads is clear, it’s not all that large. The results of the comprehensive PCMark 10 benchmark, which simulates a wide variety of tasks, show essentially equal performance from the Optane H20 with or without the cache enabled. Intel shared some of its own internal tests with us, and they confirm this parity.

Coupled with the looming availability of PCI Express 4.0 drives in more and more laptops, and advances in non-Optane storage technology, it’s clear that Optane shouldn’t be a main factor in deciding which laptop to buy. If you’re interested in the Spectre x360 15 or another laptop that offers the Optane H20, it may be worth springing for, but otherwise the lack of an Optane H20 option on a given laptop shouldn’t disqualify it from your consideration.