adata-se900g-portable-ssd-2-tb-review-–-usb-at-20-gbps

ADATA SE900G Portable SSD 2 TB Review – USB at 20 Gbps

Introduction

ADATA is Taiwan’s largest manufacturer of flash storage and DRAM memory for computers. They have been at the forefront of SSD development for many years, bringing us famous SSDs like the SX8200, SX900, and S510.

Today we are reviewing the ADATA SE900G, which is the company’s latest portable SSD. It is one of the first external storage drives that utilizes the blazing fast USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 20 Gbps interface, which doubles the transfer rates over USB 3.2 Gen 2×1 aka USB 3.1 Gen 2. Many portable SSDs using USB 3.2 Gen 2×1 were bottlenecked by the USB interface speed, so it makes sense to increase the interface transfer rate another notch. At this time, not a single AMD AM4 motherboard natively supports the 20 Gbps USB interface, on the Intel side there’s about 60 motherboards, most using the Z590 chipset. For all our testing we used a Gigabyte GC-USB 3.2 Gen2x2 PCI-Express x4 add-in card—so we can properly test ADATA’s SE900G portable SSD.

Another highlight of ADATA’s SSD is that it has a dazzling RGB lighting implementation that covers almost the whole front of the SSD.

Internally, the SE900G uses a USB-to-PCIe bridge chip, paired with a full-size ADATA SX8200 Pro SSD. The SX8200 Pro uses Micron 96-layer B27A 3D TLC flash, and a Silicon Motion SM662EN controller, with 1 GB of Samsung DRAM.

We review the ADATA SE900G in the 2 TB variant, which retails for $285, but it is also available in capacities of 512 GB, and 1 TB. Warranty is set to five years for all these models.

adata-se900g-portable-rgb-ssd-review:-rgb-invades-portables

Adata SE900G Portable RGB SSD Review: RGB Invades Portables

Our Verdict

Adata SE900G is a speedy USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 portable SSD that features a dazzling RGB design but lacks the features and warranty support that we see with other SSDs.

For

  • + Competitive performance
  • + Stylish RGB lighting
  • + Competitive pricing

Against

  • – 3-year warranty
  • – Lacks AES 256-bit encryption
  • – Lacks IP rating
  • – RGB lights aren’t controllable

Features and Specifications

RGB has made its way into everything these days: fans, cases, PSUs, motherboards, GPUs, RAM, and even M.2 and SATA internal SSDs. Now we can add portable SSDs to the list, too. Adata’s new SE900G is a speedy portable USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 SSD that is also quite the show stopper with its stylish and hypnotizing RGB shine.

The SE900G also comes with plenty of horsepower under the hood in the form of an M.2 SSD that is very similar to

the company’s controversial XPG SX8200 Pro NVMe SSD

. Like the SX8200 Pro, Adata says that the components inside this SSD can change with newer revisions. Adata guarantees that the drive will meet its performance and endurance specifications regardless of the chosen internal componentry.   

Paired with a fast USB 20 Gbps interface, the SE900 flies past its 10 Gbps competition and comes with reasonable pricing, making it a great value for those looking for a flashy portable SSD. 

Specifications

Product SE900G 500GB SE900G 1TB SE900G 2TB
Pricing $99.99 $159.99 $289.99
Capacity (User / Raw) 512GB / 512GB 1024GB / 1024GB 2048GB / 2048GB
Interface / Protocol USB-C / USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 USB-C / USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 USB-C / USB 3.2 Gen 2×2
Included USB Type-C & USB Type-C to USB Type-A USB Type-C & USB Type-C to USB Type-A USB Type-C & USB Type-C to USB Type-A
Sequential Read 2,000 MBps 2,000 MBps 2,000 MBps
Sequential Write 2,000 MBps 2,000 MBps 2,000 MBps
Interface Controller ASMedia ASM2364 ASMedia ASM2364 ASMedia ASM2364
NAND Controller SM2262EN SM2262EN SM2262EN
DRAM DDR4 DDR4 DDR4
Storage Media Micron 96L TLC Micron 96L TLC Micron 96L TLC
Power Bus-powered Bus-powered Bus-powered
Dimensions (L x W x H) 110.8 x 66 x 16.5mm 110.8 x 66 x 16.5mm 110.8 x 66 x 16.5mm
Weight 160g 160g 160g
Part Number ASE900G-512GU32G2-CBK ASE900G-1TU32G2-CBK ASE900G-2TU32G2-CBK
Warranty 3-Years 3-Years 3-Years

Adata’s SE900G is available in three capacities of 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB at reasonable pricing, given its sequential performance ratings of up to 2,000 MBps of read/write throughput.

Our 2TB sample carries the lowest price-per-GB of the lineup. At $0.14 per gigabyte, it undercuts many USB 20Gbps SSDs on the market and even USB 10Gbps SSDs like SanDisk’s Extreme v2. Unfortunately, Adata only backs the SE900G with a basic three-year warranty rather than the five-year warranty we typically see with most enthusiast-grade storage. 

The SE900G also doesn’t feature an Ingress Protection rating like our best external SSDs, nor does it come with AES 256-bit hardware encryption support to keep your data secure. The SE900G does come with the standard support for S.M.A.R.T. data reporting, UASP, and Trim, though.

Accessories

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

The SE900G comes with two USB cables — one 11.5-inch long USB Type-C cable for newer systems, and another USB Type-C to Type-A for compatibility with older ones. 

A Closer Look

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The SE900G is reasonably sized at 110.8 x 66 x 16.5mm, and it also has some heft to it. At 160 grams, the SE900G weighs two to three times more than many competing 5 Gbps and 10 Gbps portable SSDs. However, most of those drives also don’t run as fast as the SE900G and thus don’t need such robust thermal consideration. Adata’s SE900G features a large vented metal, heatsink-like back housing to provide adequate thermal dissipation under heavy use and provide some drop protection for the internals.

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A black and clear plastic panel covers the top of the SSD, allowing the RGB lights to shine through. The RGB lighting also doubles as a power indicator, and there’s also an indicator light next to the USB Type-C port.

A white PCB with eight LEDs resides under the top panel and provides the light show. Unfortunately, you cannot control the lights. This PCB also contains the ASMedia ASM2364 USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 to PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe bridge chip, M.2 slot, and supporting circuitry.

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At the heart of the SSD is a drive very similar to the XPG SX8200 Pro — this variant is powered by Silicon Motion’s very responsive SM2262EN PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe 1.3 SSD controller. This controller is a high-end eight-channel, DRAM-based design that leverages dual Arm Cortex R5 CPUs clocked at 625 MHz. This controller interfaces with 2GB of Samsung DDR4 DRAM at a clock speed of 700 MHz.

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Our SE900G sample also shipped with Micron’s 512Gb B27A 96L TLC NAND flash. There are 32 dies distributed into the four NAND packages and interface with the controller at speeds of 650 MTps. Each die has a quad-plane architecture, meaning the controller can achieve even higher levels of parallelism than dual-plane flash, which equates to faster performance. It even features subdivisions of tile groupings for faster and more efficient random reads over competing flash, such as BiCS4. 

The tiles are redundant latches grouped for small I/O (4K), while BiCS4 has other means such as SBL (shielded-bitline) current sense as opposed to ABL (all bitline) current sense. Also, unlike BiCS4, Micron’s 96L TLC takes advantage of the CuA (Circuitry Under the Array) architecture where the NAND cell arrays are placed on top of the periphery circuitry (decoders, sense amplifiers, timing circuitry, buffers, etc.) to help shrink the die as well as enable the use of the company’s unique tile grouping. Additionally, Micron claims its floating gate design gives it some inherent data retention benefit over competing charge trap flash, too.

It’s noteworthy that while these internal components came inside our review sample, Adata may change the DRAM, NAND, SSD controller, and/or bridge chip at any point in the production cycle for this drive. That means the components can vary over time. Adata guarantees that the drive will meet its performance and endurance specifications regardless of the chosen internal componentry.    

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