The Netac NV7000-T is the company's newest high-end flagship solid-state-drive. Under the hood it uses the Maxiotech MAP1602A controller, which is a fairly new four-channel design with support for TLC and DRAM-less operation. This is the second time I'm reviewing a drive with a controller from Maxiotech and I'm still impressed. We looked at the Acer Predator GM7 in April, and it looks like Maxiotech spent some time optimizing their firmware, especially for mixed workloads. While the Acer Predator GM7 is built using YMTC 128-layer 3D TLC flash, the Netac NV7000-T uses the brand-new 232-layer variant. A DRAM cache is not included, ensuring the low price point can be achieved.

Synthetic performance results of the Netac NV7000-T are decent, especially random read is very high. What's surprisingly low though is random mixed, which issues a read or write request with equal probability. This is a very important scenario to test, because on a normal computer system there's not only reads or writes, but rather a mix of both, especially when you take OS background activity into account. As mentioned before, the new firmware helps with that scenario, improving 4K mixed from 31k IOPS to 53k, which is an astonishing 70% improvement. The score is still relatively low compared to other drives, which reach around 80-90k IOPS in the test. Sequential transfer rates are good though, near the top of our test group, but none of the synthetic results are spectacular.

While synthetics are certainly useful, they only paint a partial picture. That's why our focus is on our extensive real-life testing suite, which runs all drives at 80% of its capacity filled, not an empty drive like most reviewers do. This approach puts additional pressure on the various algorithms and the SLC cache, just like in real-life. Here the Netac NV7000-T impresses big time and achieves performance levels better than nearly all SSDs on the market. The NV7000-T is slightly faster than the Samsung 980 Pro, WD Black SN850, Solidigm P44 Pro and Kingston KC3000. It seems the Maxio controller is very well optimized for DRAM-less operation, just like the controller on the WD Black SN770. We've seen this in several recent reviews: times have changed and you can no longer dismiss all DRAM-less drives—the controller and how well it handles this configuration matters, too.

Thanks to its pseudo-SLC cache, the NV7000-T can easily absorb large incoming write bursts. A SLC capacity of 207 GB is "good," filling the whole drive completed at an average speed of 1.8 GB/s, which is an excellent result and comparable to what the best PCIe 4.0 SSDs offer. Here, too, no major compromises from the drive's lack of DRAM cache—in this test it's actually the fastest DRAM-less drive we've ever tested, reaching around 500 MB/s more than the Acer Predator GM7, which uses the same controller.

Our new power consumption tests are a great match for the NV7000-T. It is the most energy-efficient drive in the whole test group—more than twice (!) as efficient as your typical Phison E18+Micron 176-layer drive. This is the case for both read and writes. Our laptop idle power results show that the drive won't enter its lowest power state, despite PCIe ASPM enabled, which is unexpected, especially considering that the Acer GM7 could easily reach that state.

This high energy-efficiency helps the NV7000-T stay cool. In our thermal stress test we did see a some thermal throttling, but this test is much more difficult to complete than our previous SSD bench. We're now using a watercooling AIO—like many of you—which means there's only minimal airflow inside the case. Netac includes a heat spreader in the package, which you may install. If you're not using your motherboard's integrated M.2 heatsink, then this is definitely recommended, as it can prolong the heat buildup process.

Finding the Netac NV7000-T online is not easy. It's currently not listed on Newegg, but Amazon has it for $125 with a $22 coupon, to bring it down to ~$100. While that price is certainly decent, it's much higher than the price on AliExpress. Here the drive is listed for $80, with free shipping to the US. Yup, that's $80 for a super-fast 2 TB M.2 NVMe SSD. VERY impressive! At that price point it's hard to find any alternatives. Of course the usual suspects are worth consideration, too. WD Black SN770 is $100, SN850X is $120, Samsung 980 Pro $115, Silicon Power XS70 $95, WD Blue SN580 $110, Gammix S70 Blade $110; in that order. As you can see, there's nothing that even comes close to the price/performance ratio of the NV7000-T. It looks like Maxio's new controller is a huge success, making them a new major player in the SSD market—our numbers show that their controller is a compelling alternative to drives using Phison, Samsung and WD.