ADATA SP920 (128GB, 256GB, 512GB & 1TB) Review
by Kristian Vättö on April 1, 2014 8:30 PM ESTFinal Words
To be honest, I don't have much to add to the conclusion of the M550 review. At 512GB and 1TB, the SP920 is an exact match with the M550. The 128GB and 256GB models lose some performance compared to the M550 due to fewer NAND dies but especially at 256GB the difference is rather insignificant. The only things that the SP920 have that the M550 doesn't are a license for data migration software and a 3.5" adapter. Whether these are something you consider valuable is totally up to you, but nowadays most cases have screw holes for 2.5" drives and data migration can be executed with freeware tools, so neither is exactly a must have feature.
| NewEgg Price Comparison (3/30/2014) | ||||
| 120/128GB | 240/256GB | 480/512GB | 960GB/1TB | |
| ADATA Premier Pro SP920 (MSRPs) | $90 | $160 | $335 | $530 |
| ADATA Premier Pro SP900 | $70 | $140 | - | - |
| ADATA XPG SX910 | $125 | $200 | $600 | - |
| Crucial M550 | $100 | $169 | $335 | $530 |
| Crucial M500 | $80 | $125 | $230 | $470 |
| Intel SSD 730 | - | $260 | $490 | - |
| Intel SSD 530 | $145 | $180 | - | - |
| OCZ Vector 150 | $110 | $190 | $390 | - |
| OCZ Vertex 460 | $100 | $266 | $360 | - |
| Samsung SSD 840 EVO | $90 | $151 | $280 | $500 |
| Samsung SSD 840 Pro | $115 | $208 | $420 | - |
| SanDisk Extreme II | $120 | $195 | $450 | - |
| Seagate SSD 600 | $105 | - | $380 | - |
In terms of pricing the SP920 is extremely competitive. The usage of 128Gbit NAND gives the SP920 a slight pricing advantage at 128GB and 256GB compared to the M550 but at 512GB and 1TB the MSRPs are the same as the M550. It will be interesting to see how the prices play out in the future—on one hand it doesn't make sense for Crucial/Micron to price the M550 higher because they should have a manufacturing cost advantage but on the other hand tier two OEMs (like ADATA) are known to be pretty aggressive on the pricing front and are not afraid of selling at a loss in the short term.
All in all, I would've liked to see something more customized from ADATA but a rebranded value drive suffices too. As I've said before, in the mainstream segment it's all about price and if the MSRPs give any hint, the SP920 (along with the M550 of course) can be very competitive there. The SF3700 is supposed to bring more customization options for OEMs, so focusing the R&D resources on it and the high-end drives doesn't sound like a bad option.
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Samus - Tuesday, April 1, 2014 - link
I'm just going to throw out there my experience with ADATA SSD's:S510: bricked in a year, but was near capacity which could have caused it to lock. however, no other SSD (sandforce or otherwise) has done that to me and this was used in an office PC with very little write activity.
SP900: Windows 7 BSOD after 5 months. had to secure erase and reinstall, did same thing 2 weeks later.
ADATA RMA takes forever (3 weeks each time.) The RMA form is erroneous and just getting the RMA number is a lot of back and forth. Proof of purchase, full system specs, lots of questions...the works. They try very hard to make it inconvenient, opposed to Crucial or Intel where the RMA process is "just send the drive to this address." They do mail back a new drive as a replacement, but don't offer to simply unlock a "frozen" drive, and obviously don't offer any sort of data recovery.
Considering I've never had a Crucial completely fail, or any issues whatsoever with an Intel drive, it's hard to ignore their reliability at the expense of 5-10% performance penalty.
Gigaplex - Wednesday, April 2, 2014 - link
Why would a parts warranty cover data recovery? That's what backups are for.Flunk - Wednesday, April 2, 2014 - link
I have a 256GB SX300 which is a Sandforce-based mSATA drive. I've had no problems and performance matches the review samples that were sent out.So my experience has been fine.
mikato - Wednesday, April 2, 2014 - link
No storage device manufacturers include data recovery service along with their devices. Data recovery usually costs more than the devices do. Some can refer you to a company that does it, and I know one has their own sub-company that does it, but it's completely separate from the device purchase. I'm curious what you mean by "simply unlock a "frozen" drive".By the way, SSD data recovery is usually quite a bit more difficult and more expensive than hard disk data recovery. And it's sometimes not even possible with more SSDs using encryption all the time, whether or not user specifies, and with the keys stored and decoding being done possibly in the part of the SSD that has failed (adios data).
If you're storing your data on an SSD (not just the OS, programs), you should be aware of the reduced avenues of disaster recovery and be even more careful with backups.
Samus - Wednesday, April 2, 2014 - link
ssd data recovery is quite simple actually, you just can't use traditional means to do it. Most if not all sad data recovery is accomplished by simply unlocking the drive or repairing the indirection table. Drives lock when they run out of spare area, good writable blocks, or can't trim/operate normally often occurring when they are low on capacity. Indirection table repair is more complex but on a file-by-file basic (lets say you just needed a few documents) it isn't very time consuming if the tech known what they are looking for.I've toured ontrack's Chicago lab and seen this all in action, they have a higher success rate with ssd's than HDD's (both over 99%)
I don't expect OEM's or manufactures to offer data recovery, but when data recover is a matter of plugging a drive in and unlocking it because their firmware is bricking drives, they SHOULD do it for their customers.
All those "refurbished" SSD's? What do you think those are? They're drives that have simply been unlocked and secure erased. It takes manufactures 30 seconds to do.
Go research sandforce "frozen" or "locked" and you'll see these controllers are notorious for locking drives (to the point they don't even detect in the BIOS) for various reasons.
hojnikb - Wednesday, April 2, 2014 - link
I've got s510 and so far so good (except bsods, i'm getting those on all my sandforce drives). As far as RMA is concernd, i've never had any issues. Last time i had to replace my usb drive, because it died on me (probobly bricked controller), they replaced it within days.Sabresiberian - Friday, April 4, 2014 - link
Despite your negative experiences, I wouldn't use them to determine that ADATA SSDs should be avoided. That being said, if I can get a 5-year warranty instead of a 3-year for very little more money I'll do that (yeah I know they are largely there to lower the worry factor for those that think SSDs might be less reliable, but still, if you need it, it's good to have). I just bought 2 480GB Sandisk Extreme IIs for $300 each - if you keep your eye out such discounts aren't hard to come by.Sabresiberian - Friday, April 4, 2014 - link
Looking at Newegg reviews, I see that ADATA drives get 3 or 4 stars. Sandisk gets 4 or 5 stars, no 3 stars. Not an absolute sign of quality of course, but over hundreds or thousands of comments from people that have bought these things, it is a factor to consider.iwod - Tuesday, April 1, 2014 - link
Do Marvell now offer much better default firmware? It was used to be the case Marvell controller were cheaper, not because of its inferior hardware but it provides very simply firmware that wasn't very highly performing. But it seems now the "default" performance behavior are pretty much all the same.Which makes me interested in the next round of SSD Controller. Do anyone have update on those from Sandforce, Marvell, etc?
JDG1980 - Wednesday, April 2, 2014 - link
My understanding was that Marvell didn't provide firmware at all - it's up to the vendor.Personally, I'd like to see a Marvell-based SSD with an open source firmware, even if the performance isn't quite as good as the best proprietary solutions.