By: Jonathan Kwan
March 22, 2019
I was recently at one of the largest Honda dealerships in Alberta to check out the all-new 2019 Insight. If you are unfamiliar with cars, the Honda Insight is a Civic-based hybrid sedan that can achieve a combined 4.9L/100km fuel economy rating on the Canadian cycle; for all the Americans out there, the EPA rates it at a whopping 52 mpg combined. Despite its whopping fuel economy, small hybrid sedans are not popular in Calgary. As such, most dealerships do not even have one in stock, and for the one I went to, it has not been test driven for a while. After it was brought inside for a look, the car's battery went flat and failed to restart. As the salesperson, technician, and manager gathered around frantically muttering "how the **** do you boost this thing" and apologizing to me at the same time, I pulled up YouTube on my iPhone, found a tutorial, and we were soon on our way. In the past, if you want to do something you do not know how, you would either find someone who does, consult the manual, or trial and error. Nowadays, there is a YouTube tutorial on everything. How times have changed. In a similar matter, in the past, solid state drives were made exclusively for performance applications. As SSDs became more mainstream, NVMe drives became the go-to for performance applications. But with the advent of budget NVMe drives like the Toshiba RC100 and Gigabyte M.2 PCIe SSD, how good are performance NVMe drives compared to budget ones? Today, we will take a look at the ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro 512GB, a performance NVMe SSD that promises up to 3500MB/s in read and 2300MB/s in write, and compared it against a slew of other drives in a traditional APH Networks manner.
Our review unit of the ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro 512GB solid state drive arrived in a small brown corrugated cardboard box from the company's American headquarters in Brea, California, USA. This is the same city as Cooler Master's offices where our MK850 was shipped from along with a collection of other keyboards. Using the UPS Standard service, it took a week, but everything arrived safely to us here in Calgary, Alberta, Canada for our review today.
It has been many years since we have last reviewed a product from ADATA, with the last one being the ADATA DashDrive Durable HD650 500GB in 2014. However, if you look at the photo above, you will realize they do not even advertise the ADATA brand on the XPG SX8200 Pro 512GB's retail package. Their sub-brand, XPG, takes center stage, just like Crucial with Ballistix and Kingston with HyperX. In that case, I think the XPG origins are better traced back to the Extreme Edition DDR2 800+ 2x1GB RAM I reviewed in November 2007. As you can see in our photo above, the XPG SX8200 Pro 512GB's retail box is predominantly black with red and white highlights. XPG's logo can be found at the top right corner, while the XPG branding along with the model name and product description is placed at the bottom left corner. The drive capacity is found at the opposite corner at the bottom. At the upper left corner, an array of icons highlight its 3D NAND, NVMe 1.3, SLC caching, advanced LDPC, and DIY heatsink.
Before we move on, let us take a look at the features and specifications of the ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro 512GB, as obtained from the manufacturer's website:
Capacity: 512GB
Form Factor: M.2 2280
NAND Flash: 3D TLC
Controller: SMI
Dimensions (L x W x H) : 22 x 80 x 3.5 mm
Weight: 8g / 0.28oz
Interface: PCIe Gen3x4
Performance(Max): Read 3500MB/s, Write 2300MB/s
Maximum 4K random read/write IOPS : up to 390K/380K
* Performance may vary based on SSD capacity, host hardware and software, operating system, and other system variables.
Operating temperature: 0°C - 70°C
Storage temperature: - 40°C - 85°C
Shock resistance: 1500G/0.5ms
MTBF: 2,000,000 hours
Warranty: 5 years
Other than the SSD itself, you will find nothing else included from the factory. Clipped on the clear plastic tray is the ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro 512GB and a black XPG branded aluminum heatsink. Although this is a performance product, SSDs are a mainstream commodity in 2019, and this is evidence to the state of things. For what it is worth, I do not know what else you can expect, haha.
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. A Closer Look, Test System
3. Benchmark: AIDA64 Disk Benchmark
4. Benchmark: ATTO Disk Benchmark
5. Benchmark: Crystal Disk Mark 6.0
6. Benchmark: HD Tach 3.0.1.0
7. Benchmark: HD Tune Pro 5.70
8. Benchmark: PassMark PerformanceTest 9.0
9. Benchmark: PCMark Vantage
10. Benchmark: PCMark 8
11. Conclusion
