XPG SX8200 Pro 2TB 3D NAND NVMe Gen3x4 PCIe M.2 2280 Solid State Drive R/W 3500/3000MB/s SSD

The hardware is near flawless. The software, however has fatal flaws. First of all the software works only with Windows. If youre running Ubuntu Linux like I do, I guess they dont want to do business with you. Then when its time to download Acronis True Image for your Windows 10 installation because you bought it with the SSD, you find their instructions are plenty wonky. They ask for a validation code that just doesnt come with the SSD, saying that its on the sticker adhered to the product. It is not. The only thing on that label or the box labels was model number and serial number of the product. The photo they supplied as a guide clearly showed three numbers on the product. I sent photos of their sticker and box, along with screenshots of their instructions and asked how I was supposed to get the validation number to download and install Acronis True Image. They sent me a canned response telling me how to register for their website (which I clearly had already done) and how to register the product (which the photos I sent them but they hadnt bothered to look at clearly showed I had already done. I tried a second time. Heres the photos. Im registered on the AData website. My SSD is registered. You ask for a validation code, give me the photo of a sticker completely unlike the one that came on my SSD, which has only two numbers: model number and serial number. Please tell me what to do. They send me the same canned response not addressing my issue. One last try. Repeated myself, and expressed dissatisfaction with their customer service, which seems not to provide human responses. I asked what a perfect product is worth if customer service is terrible, cant they actually respond to my questions and allow me somehow to download and register Acronis True Image? I received a slightly different canned response without comment, which now showed that the validation number could be the serial number for certain unidentified instances. They had also changed the requirement that the validation number have a different number of digits than the serial number. I tried it, and finally, after three weeks, succeeded in downloading Acronis and registering it. Thats when I discovered that I didnt get Acronis True Image at all, but a small subset of the Acronis True Image tools. Why am I not surprised. As much as I like the hardware, AData gets not one more penny from me. Service after the sale truly sucks. What I I had been depending on Acronis True Image to clone a hard drive? I elected to go with a fresh install and saved two weeks! I totally rebuilt my system from scratch in two weeks less than it took AData to get me the tools that wouldnt have worked with Linux anyway. The hardware is great. Buy Acronis True Image if you have Windows. You wont be getting it from AData. If youre a Linux user, they have nothing for you. I suggest either building from a fresh install, a good idea once in awhile anyway, or using Back In Time, a free software obtainable in the Ubuntu repository.

The 1TB model is the right blend of cheap, fast, and good. Its got some interesting characteristics that you need to keep in mind though. The nand controller in here, is an SMI SM2262EN and its been setup in a way that people may not expect. Namely, when you sequential write to the drive itll go full blast for about 15-20% of whatever free space you have on the drive. Empty 1TB drive = ~3500Mbps until about 150GB. Then youll see your speed get cut anywhere from 50-80% while the nand controller adjusts its strategies for writing data. This write strategy should be invisible to most people. But, you really dont want to fill up this drive. Which is probably the exact opposite thing you want to do with storage. :) I suspect many people bought smaller capacity version of this, and have inadvertently hamstrung themselves. When buying SSDs with this specific controller, you want to buy the biggest capacity one you can afford or make sure that the system it is installed in doesnt do big data moves. Having said that, even at its slowest max sequential write, its still faster than a SATA SSD. If youre the type of person that leaves all your data on a NAS or external storage and just need a super fast boot drive, this thing is fantastic for the price. The reigning king of the cheap low tier NVME drives, especially when the 1TB model hits a lightning deal. If youre going to load up the drive and leave it at like 75% full all the time, youll probably want to look elsewhere. The SLC Cache strategy is going to bug the heck out of you and probably wont pass muster on SSD benchmarks in that state.

I ordered this drive again two years after the first time, because my storage needs on the same PCI Gen3-capable board had increased, and the price & more recent reviews on this remained competitive. I had heard in the intervening time that ADATA had switched from the SM2262EN to the SM2262G controller, potentially affecting performance; had then heard that after public backlash they had switched back to the EN (this later revision referred to as “ENG,” and functionally equivalent to “EN,” not to “G”). That said, I was unsure whether old G controllers were still in distribution channels, especially given logistics concerns over the past two years. Unfortunately, the product listing is not specific, and I didn’t think to reach out to customer service to ask the question, until after I had placed my order. The automated response said to expect a response from a person within a few days AFTER I was due to receive the part; uh oh. But luckily, I got a response by the next day after my query, assuring me the item they had coming out to me was the “EN(G)” variant, and even guiding me on how to check once I had the packaging open, likewise assuring me that if it were “G,” I could send it right back & receive the correct one in replacement. When it arrived, it was indeed the ENG variant, matching both items I had received from them in the past. This experience of getting the ENG unit may not match your own, so if concerned, I urge you to reach out BEFORE ordering! That said, the speed and temperature profile of the one I received seems comparable to the original units, and the original review (below) stands, except that it’s now only about 2/3 the price it was then; even better! — Original review from 1/2020 below: MUCH cheaper than roughly equivalent Samsung units, with little performance hit. Especially on OSes for which the NVMe driver is not optimized for raw speed (say, macOS testing with Blackmagic Disk Speed Test, as opposed to Windows testing with CrystalDiskMark), the difference is likely negligible for most workloads, for a whole lot of savings. I chose not to use the included, but flimsy heatsink sheet, in favor of the one that came with the motherboard. Using that, I’ve never topped 40°C in the slot directly below the CPU (even under loads that put the CPU up to 85°C with a good but not amazing air cooler, in a case/fan config that’s admittedly pretty good for cooling).

Cant recommend it. I grabbed the 500GB version based on nice reviews from Toms Hardware, PC World and a few other go to sites. The generic crystal benchmarks are on par with the website specs showing 3000Mbps+ reads and 2200Mbps+ writes - note that they always advertise max writes based on the 1TB drive as well (over 3000Mbps) and its really hard to find the smaller drive specs on the manufacturer page. PC World says it even rivals and bests the Samsung 970 Pro in many tests. Well, unfortunately, the synthetic benchmarks are just that and you should take the them with a grain of salt. 1) at least Samsung now shows the performance of the drives when they run out of TLC cache on the EVO and EVO Plus. When transferring large files, expect no more than 900Mbps write for the 500GB Samsung EVO drives. On the XPG, I cant find that information on their website, but after several of my own 8GB single file transfers to this drive, it usually falls between 400Mbps and 600Mbps in a matter of seconds and fluctuates in that range, although occasionally reaching 900Mbps for very brief periods. This is a far cry from the 500GB versions specifications and well below the capabilities of my existing and older/smaller PCIe NVME drives. You might say these speeds are based on my hardware or the file being transfered, but then why do the older drives in my system still perform better under the same conditions and closer to their advertised speeds? My older 256GB Samsung 950 Pro still outpaces it with a steady 900Mbps on the same file writes and my other first generation MyDigital BPX 500GB also sees 900Mbps writes with the same file tests. Ive also swapped the 3 drives so they each test the file copies in the onboard m.2 slot and the 2 different PCI adapters on the 16 and 8 lane slots. While the Samsung and BPX are relatively consistent at about 900Mbps write copies onto them, the XPG is usually below 600Mbps in these real world file transfers. So, yeah, it meets the Crystal DiskMark test specs, but performs leaps and bounds slower than the advertised speeds when it comes to writing larger files (8GB files arent overly huge when you consider backup software and Blu-ray isos are much larger). Id look elsewhere for your next PCIe NVMe purchase. The price is great at $99, but not when you realize its barely on PAR with standard SATA ssds in real-world file transfers that fall well below the advertised speeds of inflated and synthetic benchmarks.

I am really Happy with this Drive, The above benchmark is not the best I have done with it, I just wanted to have an image to go with my review, this the bench was being completed while i was doing a couple small tasks, the Max I have seen it go for Seq Reads thus far is 3,200 MB/s, But getting this item on a lightening Deal for $95 was a steal! and am purchasing another one ( I will be paying a bit more since the deal is off) but this is still cheaper than my Samsung Evo Plus, and is very comparable in speeds, I copied a 60 GB game folder, from and to the same drive at 1.2 - 1.3 GB/s, I am pleased with that outcome, this is also very nice for moving videos around if you are a creator. The software they provide for free with your purchase to clone your drive was very fast and took 12 minutes, with no issues. I have seen people reviewing this saying its not as advertised, but please be sure you are seeing what item they are talking about. The 3500 /3000 Speeds are for the 1 TB drive, not for the 256 that I have seen, and be sure you have no bottlenecks on your system, and remember if you are copying from a Sata SSD to this, you are of course not going to get 3000 MB/S read and Write speeds, you will need to either copy to and from the same drive (SX8200 Pro) or if you have 2 of these drives. the limit is as fast as the slowest drive on your system you are copying to or from.

So I saw a lot of people complaining that these dont perform as well as they review. While there might be some bad batches, you also need to realize that hardware types will limit the total speed. If your device only supports PCIe 2.0, which has a rating of 500MB/S per channel, and 4x you would get 2000MB/S total. So you cant get the 3500MB/S advertised. Youd max out at 2000. PCIe 3.0 can do 1000MB/S per channel, so you could max out the device at around 3350MB/S (the title says 3500, but when you see the comparison chart in the details it is a little lower). It depends on the motherboard and CPU for what is supported. NEXT! I just put together an x570 / Ryzen 3900x build. The board has two slots, so I started out with the bottom slot to get it away from the GPU hoping to cut down on heat (I have a metal heatsink on it). However, when I fired up Crystal disk mark on a fresh windows 10 install I noticed the speeds were much lower than advertised. There isnt much on the internet about this, but I found when a board has two m.2 drives it typically splits the bandwidth up. 4 PCIe lans from the CPU go to the primary slot, and 4 PCIe lans from the Chipset go to the secondary. What I realized is when I ran the drive off the chipset-based slot, it got much lower rates. When I moved it to the main slot, it got what it was rated for. Then I changed the setting in CrystalDiskmark to NVMe mode, and it went up a little more. You can see my comparisons in the pictures. Yes it does matter which slot it is in. So, if you are getting lower than rated specs check your supported PCIe version and the slot itself. Always use the CPU-based slot for the best performance(it would seem).

The Drive works great, the installation was an adventure. I was replacing an older m.2 SSD boot drive in my laptop, so needed to clone the boot drive onto the new ADATA drive. They say the Acronis True Image software is included to allow you to clone your drive. So I went ahead jumping through hoops to get this done. Hoops: 1. Create an account with ADATA 2. Give them your email address, password, check for email confirmation etc. 3. Login 4. Register your product on the website. 5. Find the serial number on the box. It is the number beside EAN. You figure this out by plugging every other number in and getting rejected. 6. Take a picture of the serial number on the box and upload. You figure out what to take a picture of by sending pictures of other numbers on the box and not getting anywhere 7. Ask for your Acronis Download. You get a link in the email ADATA sends you. 8. Make an Acronis account with your email and password 9. Plug in your Warranty number and other info into another field. 10. Get rejected. 11. Put in any other number on the box. 12. Get rejected 13. I called the tech support number. I was a little ticked off by this time. 14. Tech support summary - Yes that process you were told to follow doesnt seem to work for anybody. Go ahead and download Macrium Reflect, free edition and it will take care of your disk clone for you Summary - Save yourself time and frustration, dont register your drive. Download Macrium free and clone. My concern - if this is how there product support works, what if my drive fails? Adata needs to up their game

I want to start first with I could buy cheaper it in my country. Now lets get to the point. A wonderful and impressive product with amazing performance. After a lot of discussion with friends and reading, I decided to purchase it and Im not sorry for a moment. As a gamer and graphic designer I am very pleased with his performance. I bought a 512 gigabyte, it feels a bit small but thats enough if you want to install software and not a lot of games in one go. The setup was very simple, at first it was strange to me with a little inclination but after checking it turns out to be correct. It was strange to me that such a product comes in really unprotected packaging. I mean that he was in the packaging with Sealed Air seemed insufficient for that. Bottom line, amazing product! Worth the investment and also in my opinion saving space in the computer case with hard disk, does not take up space at all. Too bad my motherboard has room for only one.

Very good

WOW! This M.2 is amazing! I went from using a SATA SSD and thought the performance difference wasnt going to be much better but I am pleased to say its quite the opposite! The price is also amazing and I have read it rivals Samsung and their performance. This M.2 loads windows almost instantly and the way I was able to tell the difference is the ability of right when windows launches to the desktop you can open a bunch of applications with no buffering or wait time Pros: Good price Amazing performance comes with DIY heatsink (This thing runs very hot!) Cons: -Setup didnt come with the screw all M.2s require but I was able to manage with my specific case. -Not specific to ADATAs M.2 but most mother boards SATA connections are canceled when you install a M.2 which caused issues with my OS SSD not showing up. Reading the motherboards manual to see what SATAs get shutoff when you install an M.2 is vital and will save you time on the troubleshooting when ur PC wont boot because it -shut off your other drives. -Didnt come with screw to install into MOBO