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

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).

Ive upgraded from my Samsung 840 evo SSD to this Adata M2 as my boot drive. The speeds are a vast upgrade over the SSD topping out around 540 MB/s. Ive attached my personal benchmark after installing the drive fresh and cloning the drive. I would categorize these results as acceptable, close to the 3500 MB/s range. The Arconis tool you get is horribly outdated (2018 version), you must register your product with Adata then get the key etc. It was a pain in the butt honestly. Ive used Samsung and Seagate tools in the past that were just so much better. Anyways, it did the job. It made the recovery partition too large, so I had to fix it up with diskpart after. I didnt see any issues with packaging like some reviewers, looks like its straight from the manufacturer and not a refurb. Also, dont be a dope, and make sure you buy the tiny screws/mounts to install M2 drives if you dont have them. Dont knock this product for not having the included screws. This is the kit I got and it worked fine: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07Q8THWZD/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

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.

The box includes the SSD and a DIY heatsink. You can leave the heatsink out if you like, I left it out cause I currently dont have a screw to screw it to apply the heatsink. Your motherboard includes that screw, but i lost mine (you can buy the screws) Its okay to leave the SSD sticking out if you arent going to be moving your PC a lot. DO NOT CLONE! If you plan to use it to boot Windows do a fresh install by doing a USB boot. Prepare an empty USB. Back up everything that you need right away to the cloud or directly to the HDD. A fresh install is like starting from scratch so anything that isnt saved directly to the hard drive, the desktop isnt directly at the hard drive, will be lost till you go back to your old boot. Yes, you will need to reinstall everything so get your keys ready. Download a Windows boot to the USB directly from Microsoft. Turn off your pc and remove every storage except the USB and SSD. Turn on your pc and this will boot the Windows installer. This will delete anything in the SSD if there is any. Once its done turn off your pc to reconnect all your storage. Tune in your pc and smash ESC/F2 to boot BIOS to make sure your SSD is the priority boot. Reason why not to clone. Its almost 100% it will make a bad clone and there is a potential chance to lose your data. If you dont plant to use it to boot Windows and dont see the SSD folder. Search up in Windows Create and format hard disk click it and looks for the SSD. right click and click create volume and youre set! Easy to install and use!

I bought this in Dec 21 as an additional cache drive for a NAS (running Unraid) but noted lots of of media and data integrity errors after around 9-10 months, that was faulting my NAS. Removed the drive and things went back to normal. Raised a ticket (with some struggles on a less than friendly website) and eventually got an RMA. Returned at end of November 22 - still within the year guarantee period. Got a delivery receipt from UPS detailing its arrival and that it had been signed for. RMA website however says that they are still waiting to receive it...! After several weeks with no response to multiple emails, eventually got a were having supply problems - be patient... email on Dec 29th. Nothing since. Their RMA system however still says they havent received it...! So essentially, theyve either lost or thrown away my SSD, I have nothing to show for it, and they are completely ignoring my emails. Having the SSD fail is one thing - ignoring/denying that the drive has been returned (despite the UPS receipt copied to them ) is a different level of ineptitude. Ive never experienced anything like this ever with any company - I will never buy anything from them again, and in all conscience can only advise anyone else to stay well away...

I was looking to upgrade the SSD in my 13 Macbook AIr 2014, since the original 128GB it came with was almost completely full. I was considering buying the expensive Apple or OWC SSD because of Apples unique form factor, but then after reading a few more articles online, discovered that this more affordable Adata SSD would work, as long as you also purchased an adapter to fit the Macbook. The first picture shows the original Apple SSD at the top, the Adata SSD in the middle, the Sintech adapter at the bottom. The second picture shows the original SSD right next to the Adata SSD with the adapter on. The next two pictures are of the Adata SSD installed, before and after adding the cool XPG heat sink + label the Adata came with. The last two pictures are the before and after speeds: not only was the size of my SSD increased by 4x, but my read and write speeds also increased by 2x and 4x, respectively. I read that some other cheaper adapters werent as good as the Sintech in terms of speed, which is why I paid more for this one. Please make sure to backup the original SSD to an external USB drive using Disk Utility (the restore feature) BEFORE swapping the SSDs, and take screenshots of the format types before too. If you know what youre doing, this is a great buy decision!

Ive attached actual performance benchmarks from CrystalDiskMark in the images, both for a single drive and for the drives in RAID 0 configured as the boot volume. As you can see there is a slight boost for using RAID on sequential reads and a noticeable bump to writes. The drives installed easily, setting up RAID was a breeze thanks to ASUS/Intel RST. Windows 10 Pro installed smoothly and worked first time out. So, why not 5 stars? This model is listed as being supported by ADATAs SSD Toolbox software. This software is the only way to update the firmware and offers optimization, diagnostics and utilities that Id like to try out. In RAID 0 the drives arent recognized by the SSD Toolbox application. I contacted technical support who informed me the software would not work in conjunction with a RAID volume. This is understandable because the RAID controller is masking them into a single volume. I then wiped the RAID volume and re-installed Windows 10 onto a single drive, however, even when not combined into a RAID volume where the drives are independently recognized by the OS, the software still does not see the drives. I reached out to technical support again with screenshots demonstrating the issue and the response was to uninstall/reinstall the software. I did this, no joy. Interestingly, my Samsung SATA III SSDs were both recognized. They pointed out that there is not a firmware update needed currently but things may get complicated as time goes and updates come. As of this writing, no solution to get the software to recognize the drives under normal conditions. Im not satisfied by the support, as they seem to be dodging any actual assistance and e-mail responses take an entire day between steps/recommendations. Below is the system I have the drives installed in currently. Its a home productivity workstation and planned to be a gaming rig after some key upgrades down the road. Namely would like to replace the CPU with an i7-9700k and add an RTX 2080 Ti. 1x Asus ROG Maximus XI Hero Wi-Fi Z390 1x Intel Core i3-8100 Coffee Lake Quad-Core 3.6 GHz LGA 1151 300 Series 65W 1x Kingston Technology HyperX Fury Black 32GB 3200MHz DDR4 CL18 DIMM Memory (HX432C18FBK2/32) [Kit of 2 16GB Modules] 2x Adata XPG SX8200 Pro 1TB 3D NAND NVMe Gen3x4 PCIe M.2 2280 SSD [Intel RST RAID 0, Boot Drive] 1x Samsung 850 PRO 256GB 2.5 SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-7KE256BW) 1x Samsung 860 EVO 500GB 2.5 SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-76E500B/AM) 1x G-Technology 4TB G-Drive USB-C (USB 3.1 Gen 1) External Hard Drive (0G05666) 1x Corsair Carbide 275R Mid-Tower Gaming Case - Tempered Glass - Black (CC-9011132-WW) 1x Corsair AX1600i 1600W ATX 80 Plus Titanium Certified Full Modular Digital ATX Power Supply (CP-9020087-NA) 1x Windows 10 Professional

I purchased the 3500mb/s version of the 2TB model and I think that 3500 must be an average of the read and write speeds. (Please refer to the attached screenshot from Blackmagics diskspeed test tool.) The drive is installed into a PCIe4 slot on an x570mobo with a 3900x. Note that this test is performed after having the drive for a year and using it as my frequently played Steam games drive. It has about 300gigs of tv shows and a terabyte of games like GTA5, some Bioshocks, Monster Hunter World. So the drive has seen fair use over time both in sequential reading as well as random access. I *FEEL* like Monster Hunter loads more quickly off of the NVME versus the SATA3 SSD I had it on before this, but MHW on PC is so much better than PS4 I cant be sure (nor bothered to move the install back to check). This doesnt do a damned thing for GTA5 (or online) load times. GTA5 is bad and nothing helps it perform well. Shame upon Rockstar and all their managers. The poor performance here is nothing to do with the drive, though. Watching shows requires almost no speed, so if you wanted to waste your money on this instead of a rust drive for storing video, the experience would be fine. Ive done a little video editing off of this (720p60 prores) and it feels good. While I wouldnt dare use this as a capture destination, storing proxies here has, in my experience, been good. I dont believe that reading off of it affects drive life, but I dont know enough about that to talk about it beyond how it felt. The proxies I made were done overnight, so I dont know what effect the drive speed might have had. Im content with the drive, and am content with the price I paid (270usd) but I wouldnt blindly buy a second one and will definitely do research on competition in the future. I have no opinion about the manufacturer or its support structure, as the drive still works fine a year in.

One of the best deals you can get in terms of price for speeds. Its great for gaming in terms of loading times even though most games dont fully take advantage of its speed yet. A couple notes: 1) You may not get full speed if your motherboard doesnt support it. Moreover, the slot you put it in (many motherboards have 2) can make a difference. Check your motherboard manual to be sure. And despite my manual saying both slots were identical, the upper one beside the CPU provided the best performance shown in the screenshot. The lower slot only got up to 2500. (Asus Tuf Gaming X570-Plus (Wi-Fi). I suspect the faster slot is usually going to be the CPU-adjacent one. 2) These drives can get hot. I suggest at least getting a little heatsink (theyre like $10 on Amazon) if your motherboard doesnt include a good one. Also pay attention that the location of the drive gets some airflow.

Getting good performance from the 1TB drive and, on paper at least, it seems relatively on par with a Samsung drive for the most part and at about $40-50 less. I say on paper since I havent really done anything to push this drive since Im just using it as a boot drive and not for any extreme storage scenarios. The only drawback is that the SSD endurance is only 640 TBW, but as long as its being used for games or boot, I dont see this as a big deal. As a boot drive, it was super easy to install and the fact that it came with an optional heat spreader is great... although, it mostly just a thin piece of metal with some pre-applied thermal compound -- nothing fancy. Performance-wise its definitely an improvement over my old 850 EVO SATA SSD. I say go for it if youre on a budget and need a solid NVME SSD.