Netac is a fairly new player to the retail SSD business, especially to Western markets. In China, they are a well-known manufacturer, especially when it comes to the OEM business; i.e., as a producer of storage solutions for other companies. The company has recently launched their own Netac-branded high-performance SSDs, and they are starting to show up on European and US shops now. Today, we are testing the Netac NV7000, which is the company's flagship SSD based on the highly popular Phison E18 controller paired with Micron 176-layer 3D TLC flash—a combination we have seen on many other high-end SSDs. For their NV7000, Netac is using the Phison reference design PCB, which is a great choice as it is a well-tested configuration that ensures a trouble-free operation at all times. In terms of cooling, Netac uses their own heatsink design, which, as our thermal testing shows, is a highly capable solution that not only looks good, but works well, too.

Overall synthetic performance results of the Netac NV7000 are very good, near the top of our scoreboards, which is expected of any drive using the E18 controller. Phison made sure a lot of optimization went into getting these synthetic scores high enough, which is why our real-life testing is so important—it runs actual applications,which is much harder to optimize for. Our real-life testing is also performed with 80% of the drive filled, which is a more realistic scenario and limits the drive in the way it uses its pseudo-SLC cache.

The real-life test results are excellent—the Netac NV7000 matches the Kingston KC3000 and Samsung 980 Pro and is just 1% behind the WD Black SN850 and 2% behind the Hynix P41 Platinum. These are impressive results that confirm that Netac's drive offers the same performance levels as the other Phison E18+Micron B47R designs. Compared to PCIe 3.0 drives, the performance difference is between 5% and 15%, and aging SATA drives are at least 25% slower.

Netac has engineered a great, well-constructed heatsink it attached using four screws, so it makes ideal contact with the chips. While not mentioned anywhere in Netac's docs or web pages, the NV7000 is compatible with the Sony PlayStation 5—the heatsink fits within the requirements of Sony's specification. In our thermal stress test, we couldn't get the drive to thermally throttle at all mostly because of Phison's energy-efficient controller design, but the heatsink works well, too. With 77°C measured temperature, the drive doesn't really get that warm—we're often seeing over 100°C on high-end M.2 NVMe drives in that test. That's great news for the PS5 as it means you don't have to worry about thermal throttling. Thermals are actually not a big deal on the PS5 due to the sporadic activity and adequate passive airflow design, but it never hurts to have better cooling.

Priced at $350 for the tested 2 TB version, the Netac NV7000 is fairly expensive even considering its high-end positioning. Drives that use the same E18+176-layer NAND flash combination—essentially the same as the NV7000—can be found at the same price or cheaper. For example, the Kingston KC3000 is the same $350, Seagate FireCuda 530 $325, MP600 Pro LPX and Team Group Cardea A440 Pro $270, and Silicon Power XS70 only $240—these are all the same drive, just with a different heatsink. Strong competition comes from the Samsung 980 Pro currently selling for $270, which is an excellent deal. The WD Black SN850 is discounted to $240 right now, which is an even better deal. Hynix's brand-new P41 Platinum, the fastest SSD we ever tested, is listed for $260. Given these three offerings, Netac must bring their price down to well below $300 to make it an interesting option for the potential buyers—the underlying hardware is topnotch, and the 5-year warranty provides peace of mind. You might also want to consider PCIe 3.0 SSDs for gaming and applications on the PC or PS5—real-life differences are minimal, and the money saved can be used for something else.