Introduction

Today, we have on the test bench the ADATA SE800 portable SSD. Portable storage is growing into an important segment for consumer SSD storage as people are moving ever increasing volumes of data around. While mechanical HDDs have offered terabyte-sized capacities for years, these drives are simply too slow for an enjoyable user experience due to their slow transfer rates—copying 1 TB of data at 100 MB/s takes 3 hours!



ADATA's SE800 uses the USB 3.2 Gen2 interface to support transfer rates up to 1 GB/s, which can be a game changer if you have to copy a lot of data. Since the SE800 uses no moving parts, it is much more resilient to shock than a traditional HDD and also eliminates the seek-time bottleneck all hard drives have. The SE800 is IEC IP68 certified, which means it is completely dust resistance, and it can operate after being immersed for up to 30 minutes in water.

Internally, ADATA is using a USB-to-PCIe bridge from ASMedia paired with a DRAM-less Innogrit IG5208 flash controller—first time we're seeing that in an SSD. The flash chips are 64-layer 3D TLC.

ADATA's SE800 is available in capacities of 512 GB ($99) and 1 TB ($175).

Package and Contents

Inside the package you will find the SSD itself, a USB Type-C cable, and a cable with a standard USB (Type-A) port.

The Drive

ADATA has chosen a clean, stylish look for their external SSD. Personally, I like the blue color, but if you prefer something else, a black version is available, too.


A single USB-C port lets you connect to the drive. Note the small LED to the right of the connector. It lights up blue when the drive is powered on and also serves as a disk activity indicator by turning off the LED while data is written.