ADATA SP920 (128GB, 256GB, 512GB & 1TB) Review
by Kristian Vättö on April 1, 2014 8:30 PM ESTFinal Words
To be honest, I don't have much to add to the conclusion of the M550 review. At 512GB and 1TB, the SP920 is an exact match with the M550. The 128GB and 256GB models lose some performance compared to the M550 due to fewer NAND dies but especially at 256GB the difference is rather insignificant. The only things that the SP920 have that the M550 doesn't are a license for data migration software and a 3.5" adapter. Whether these are something you consider valuable is totally up to you, but nowadays most cases have screw holes for 2.5" drives and data migration can be executed with freeware tools, so neither is exactly a must have feature.
| NewEgg Price Comparison (3/30/2014) | ||||
| 120/128GB | 240/256GB | 480/512GB | 960GB/1TB | |
| ADATA Premier Pro SP920 (MSRPs) | $90 | $160 | $335 | $530 |
| ADATA Premier Pro SP900 | $70 | $140 | - | - |
| ADATA XPG SX910 | $125 | $200 | $600 | - |
| Crucial M550 | $100 | $169 | $335 | $530 |
| Crucial M500 | $80 | $125 | $230 | $470 |
| Intel SSD 730 | - | $260 | $490 | - |
| Intel SSD 530 | $145 | $180 | - | - |
| OCZ Vector 150 | $110 | $190 | $390 | - |
| OCZ Vertex 460 | $100 | $266 | $360 | - |
| Samsung SSD 840 EVO | $90 | $151 | $280 | $500 |
| Samsung SSD 840 Pro | $115 | $208 | $420 | - |
| SanDisk Extreme II | $120 | $195 | $450 | - |
| Seagate SSD 600 | $105 | - | $380 | - |
In terms of pricing the SP920 is extremely competitive. The usage of 128Gbit NAND gives the SP920 a slight pricing advantage at 128GB and 256GB compared to the M550 but at 512GB and 1TB the MSRPs are the same as the M550. It will be interesting to see how the prices play out in the future—on one hand it doesn't make sense for Crucial/Micron to price the M550 higher because they should have a manufacturing cost advantage but on the other hand tier two OEMs (like ADATA) are known to be pretty aggressive on the pricing front and are not afraid of selling at a loss in the short term.
All in all, I would've liked to see something more customized from ADATA but a rebranded value drive suffices too. As I've said before, in the mainstream segment it's all about price and if the MSRPs give any hint, the SP920 (along with the M550 of course) can be very competitive there. The SF3700 is supposed to bring more customization options for OEMs, so focusing the R&D resources on it and the high-end drives doesn't sound like a bad option.
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Samus - Wednesday, April 2, 2014 - link
Marvell controllers are just simpler than Sandforce (which is a good thing)Marvell has eDrive support in their newer controllers, simpler firmware, lower power usage, and no compression technology (making the implementation simple and performance consistent)
I prefer Marvell and Intel controllers over everyone else's but some newer controllers have looked promising (like OCZ's Barefoot)
Kristian Vättö - Thursday, April 3, 2014 - link
Marvell only provides the silicon - the firmware development is up to the manufacturer.hojnikb - Wednesday, April 2, 2014 - link
It's interesting to see that lower capacity versions perform better than m500, despite using the same die size flash. Is this because of the updated controller or more aggressive flash programming ?Samus - Wednesday, April 2, 2014 - link
They have the m550 controller but use the m500's NAND technology so the lower capacity drives are in between the m500 and m550 in performance.Kristian Vättö - Thursday, April 3, 2014 - link
Likely just better optimization at the firmware level.hojnikb - Thursday, April 3, 2014 - link
So in theory, they could update the m500 and boost it's, if they wanted ?hojnikb - Thursday, April 3, 2014 - link
*write speed, silly me :)(damn no edit option)
nick2crete - Wednesday, April 2, 2014 - link
Well ,i prefer to deal with Crucial than Adata even overseas where i am ..Hubb1e - Wednesday, April 2, 2014 - link
I just wanted to let the writer and editorial staff know that a good number of people skip right to the end of the article for the normal recap of the article's main points. This is especially true for SSD articles which IMO are getting to be a commodity and aren't all that interesting anymore. I felt that the final words didn't do a good job of recapping where this drive stands in the overall SSD segment, didn't give much in the way of a pro/cons for this drive, and refereed too much to a comparison with a drive that I don't know much about. This seems like a new writer so I wanted to let the staff know about my opinion on this so he can improve his next article for Anandtech.mcnaughty - Wednesday, April 2, 2014 - link
Totally agreed. Skip the waffle, we regular readers know all this already. Give us the numbers, and the interesting differences.