Priced at $130 for the 1 TB version, the Sabrent Rocket Q SSD is one of the most affordable SSDs on the market. It uses a new Phison E12S controller, which has better thermal performance and can operate with smaller DRAM cache. Write speeds are impressive due to 250 GB of pseudo-SLC cache.
The Addlink X70 RGB SSD lets you control its lighting through motherboard software from all the big vendors, so you can sync it to the rest of your system. Performance is good, too, especially random and sequential writes. The preinstalled heatsink works well, keeping temperatures in check.
Western Digital's WD Red SA500 is a solid-state-disk optimized for NAS usage, either as cache drive or for primary storage. With a price of $140 for 1 TB, the SSD is priced more aggressively than Seagate's IronWolf 110 NAS competitor, yet offers similar performance and still retains the five-year warranty.
The Team Group Delta Max RGB SSD offers truly impressive RGB illumination that can be synced with your motherboard's lighting effects. Each of the LEDs can be controlled separately, both in color and brightness. Performance is also very decent due to the combination of the SMI controller with some Samsung TLC flash.
With just $50 for the tested 512 GB model, the BIOSTAR M700 M.2 NVMe SSD is the most affordable SSD we ever reviewed, even cheaper than most 2.5" SATA drives. Thanks to its fast PCIe x4 3.0 interface paired with an SMI controller, performance is good, too. Is there any reason left to buy a 2.5" SATA SSD?
The Team Group T-Force Vulcan SSD is priced extremely competitively with $50 for 500 GB, yet delivers outstanding performance. What's surprising is that the drive comes in both TLC and MLC variants, at the same price, but there's no way to know before buying. We tested both models in our review, with surprising results.
The Seagate FireCuda 510 SSD impresses with transfer rates reaching 4 GB/s; random reads go up to 475k IOPS. Under the hood, the drive uses Toshiba 3D TLC flash paired with Hynix DDR4 DRAM. Sustained transfer rates are excellent, even when the large SLC cache is exhausted, and thermals are good, too.
The ADATA XPG Spectrix S40G is the first M.2 SSD with adjustable RGB lighting effects. It not only looks great, but performs well, too. Thanks to 3.3 GB/s read and 2.3 GB/s writes, delivered real-life performance is comparable to the fastest NVMe SSDs on the market.
The Team Group Cardea II M.2 NVMe SSD comes with a large pre-installed heatsink that adds excellent cooling capability to prevent any sort of thermal throttling. Another highlight is the good sustained write performance, which ends up at over 1 GB/s even though TLC flash is used.
Priced at just $89.99 for the 1 TB version, the Patriot P200 is the perfect solution for users wanting large affordable storage to keep all their games on SSD. Even though it's based on TLC, sustained write performance is amazing, and there is no visible speed drop.
AMD's new Ryzens are the first desktop processors to support PCI-Express 4.0, which doubles transfer rates over PCIe 3.0. We test real-life performance gains using the 2 TB Gigabyte Aorus Gen4 M.2 NVMe SSD, which reaches over 5 GB/s in sequential speeds.
The Seagate IronWolf 110 SSD is the first solid-state drive optimized for use in a NAS. It comes with the best and most consistent write speeds we've seen in a long time. On top of the five-year warranty, Seagate includes a data recovery service that will recover your files in case of failure.
Priced at a stunning $110, the ADATA SX6000 Pro 1 TB is one of the most affordable NVMe drives on the market, and a heatsink is included, too, to help avoid thermal throttling. In our performance testing, we see decent performance that's within a few percentages of other, more expensive M.2 SSDs.
The WD Blue NVMe is WD's new entry-level SSD using the M.2 PCIe x2 interface and 3D TLC flash. With a price of only $73 for the reviewed 500 GB version, it's one of the most affordable drives on the market that still delivers very decent performance. We saw no thermal-throttling, even when fully loaded and completely uncooled.
Team Group's MP34 M.2 NVMe SSD comes at exceptional pricing of only $80 for the tested 512 GB version, which is less than 16 cents per GB. This puts it really close to SATA drives and QLC M.2 SSDs, with better performance at the same time.
WD Black NVMe is Western Digital's premium M.2 SSD for demanding gamers and enthusiasts. It uses an 8-channel SSD controller paired with SanDisk 3D TLC flash. Priced at $105 for the reviewed 500 GB version, it comes at reasonable pricing, and offers outstanding performance.
The Apacer AS2280P2 is an M.2 NVMe PCIe 3.0 x2 SSD built using Toshiba 15 nm 3D TLC flash and a Phison PS5008-E8 controller. Priced at around $100 for the 480 GB version, this solid-state drive is one of the more affordable ways to join the NVMe crowd.
Team Group's MP32 SSD comes in the compact M.2 2280 form factor and uses NVMe over a PCI-Express x2 interface. Another important change is that for cost-optimizations, a DRAM cache chip is not used, which definitely helps with pricing.
The ADATA SX8200 Pro comes with a faster controller, which improves the performance of TLC significantly. Especially heavy writes see big improvements with results that almost make this drive look like MLC. Pricing is extremely reasonable, too: only 21 cents per GB. The SX8200 Pro is both faster and cheaper than the Samsung 970 EVO.
The HyperX Fury RGB SSD features full RGB control using 75 bright LEDs, which, once connected to the RGB header of your motherboard, can be adjusted to the exact color and brightness you want to match other components in your system perfectly.
Crucial has finally released their first M.2 NVMe solid-state drive. The Crucial P1 SSD is built using QLC NAND flash, which is the next generation in flash memory, promising lower cost per GB than previous technologies. In our testing, we see good results that are competitive with popular TLC drives like the Samsung 970 EVO and Intel 760p.
The Samsung 970 EVO is the company's offering for users who want the blazing speeds of NVMe, but aren't willing to pay premium for the 970 Pro. Read speeds of the 970 EVO match the 970 Pro; writes are lower, but still very good at 1.7 GB/s.
Samsung's 970 Pro flagship SSD offers incredible performance, especially when it comes to writes, where it tops the charts with up to 2.4 GB/s because of MLC flash. Reads are even faster at 3.5 GB/s. If only the SSD was more affordable: $200 for 512 GB is not exactly cheap.
Seagate's new BarraCuda SSD lineup marks the company's return to the SSD world. The drive comes with a 5-year warranty and is available at a highly competitive price of $79 for the reviewed 500 GB version. Seagate uses 64-layer 3D TLC flash from Toshiba, and a DRAM chip is included, too.
Crucial's new BX500 SSD comes at a great price point of just $80 for the reviewed 480 GB version, making it one of the most affordable drives on the market. It is a DRAM-less design that's built around a Silicon Motion controller with Micron-made 3D TLC NAND.
