I have had the 512GB for a month and I have to tell you the following. The NVMe is good for the money with relatively good temperatures and it also has a heatsink, which you will see why below. It is very nice and has a 5-year warranty. Personally, I bought it because I saw good reviews here and that the Samsung 970 Evo Plus is not worth it because you pay a lot of money for nothing. Once again, it wasn't exactly what they said it was. I chose it purely for the difference and not because it was cheap. I bought it for 68€ from eshop.gr and I bought it to upgrade from the Samsung 970 Evo 250GB. And yes, it is faster than the 970. WARNING! For those who don't know, there are two different chips. The good controller is the SM2262EN, which is also used in the 8200 Pro and S11 Pro. The 8200 Pro has recently been changed to the SM2262G, and the same goes for this one! In other words, Adata downgraded the drives with slower speeds and shorter lifespan without saying anything, purely for profit and deceiving their buyers. Major fail. The good pieces are the old ones, meaning the ones with the SM2262EN controller, which luckily I have. Now, if you get a recent production drive, you will definitely get one with the SM2262G controller, which is considerably slower than what Adata promises. If you are interested in the drive, search on Google for what I told you to see the differences and confirm that it's true. It's a bit risky whether you'll get the good piece or not, so that's a big downside, along with Adata's sneaky move. Now let's talk about the scores, and I want you to see something that I didn't expect. So, the Samsung 970 Evo 250GB that I had achieved exactly what the company claimed, which is 3535MB/s read and 1539MB/s write in Crystal Disk Mark 8.0. On an Asus Crosshair VI Hero X370 motherboard with a PCIe 3 slot for the drive, and with a Ryzen 2700X CPU overclocked to 4.2GHz and G.Skill TridentZ Neo 32GB 3600MHz RAM, which was running at 3400MHz due to the CPU's limitations. Now you might wonder why I'm telling you all this, but now we're getting to the heart of the matter and you'll understand why! With this setup, the Adata drive achieved the following speeds in Crystal Disk Mark 8.0.0 x64:
Test: 1 GiB (x5) [C: 11% (51/476GiB)]
Read (MB/s) / Write (MB/s)
SEQ1M Q8T1 > 2948.74 / 2449.62
SEQ1M Q1T1 > 2640.92 / 2307.99
RND4K Q32T1 > 409.08 / 266.79
RND4K Q1T1 > 64.37 / 145.63
The score is with 11% usage, meaning 51GB out of 476GB! Now let's see what happened when it filled up a bit more...
Test: 1 GiB (x5) [C: 34% (161/476GiB)]
Read (MB/s) / Write (MB/s)
SEQ1M Q8T1 > 2832.01 / 2420.40
SEQ1M Q1T1 > 2360.57 / 2145.86
RND4K Q32T1 > 121.64 / 97.06
RND4K Q1T1 > 44.16 / 72.72
The score is with 34% usage, meaning 161GB out of 476GB! It is logical for the speeds to decrease slightly as a drive fills up, but not to this extent. The Samsung 970 Evo 250GB maintained the same score whether it was empty or full. Now something incredible happened that impressed me greatly. I upgraded and changed the processor to the Ryzen 3700x with the exact same components that I mentioned above, I just changed the processor and the RAM worked at 3600mhz. Out of curiosity, I ran a test and noticed that all the scores on the disk have increased without me doing anything, and the scores are as follows:
test: 1 GiB (x5) [C: 31% (148/476GiB)]
Read (mb/s) / Write (mb/s)
SEQ1M Q8T1 > 3032.88 / 2444.31
SEQ128K Q32T1 > 2991.06 / 2446.98
RND4K Q32T16 > 1271.18 / 1123.55
RND4K Q1T1 > 69.52 / 187.13
In the end, both the processor and the motherboard play a role in this specific case. My motherboard is the best in x370, so those who don't know should look it up. I didn't lose anything from there. Now, because I bought it on the same day as my friend who has exactly the same setup, except he has an Asus Crosshair VI Extreme motherboard, he has almost the same scores as me. Neither of us saw anything above 3000mbs read and write, so I don't know how true it is that some achieve 3300+.
Positives:
1) Affordable.
2) Beautiful.
3) Cooling?
4) 5-year warranty.
Negatives:
1) The main issue is that the guys at Adata downgraded it with a different controller, resulting in lower speeds, as I mentioned, without mentioning it anywhere, purely for their own profit and deceiving the consumers - buyers with this move!
2) The Adata program is garbage. I tried to update the firmware of the disk and after that, the disk started to lag and freeze. I was ready to send it for warranty because I thought it was broken, but after formatting, I realized that it was the program's fault. So be very careful with the Adata SSD toolbox, if you install it, don't touch anything from there.
3) There is no manual included in the packaging. Okay, I know how to install it, but what about someone who doesn't know? You might say, "Let them check YouTube," but it's not that simple. When you pay for something, there should be support.
4) It gets hot, and that's why they added a heatsink. I've seen temperatures up to 60 degrees in a full tower case with incredible airflow. I mean, with the same usage, I never saw the Samsung go above 45 degrees. Maybe they should have added a heatsink to it too...
Now, is it worth it in the end? Personally, for me, it's worth it for its price only if you get the old controller, namely the SM2262EN, which is faster. Now, if you get the new pieces with the slower controller SM2262G, it's not worth it in my opinion. Personally, I wouldn't buy it again because I'm afraid of getting the slower piece and wasting my money. In short, I would go for the Samsung 970 Evo Plus 500GB, which I will eventually get because it's faster and more reliable. There's a saying that says you get what you pay for, and it applies here too. Of course, if you don't care about getting the latest number that the company claims, then you can get it and not worry about whether you'll get the good or the slow piece. Definitely, for 70€ for 476GB, or rather 512GB, it's worth it. But it's a shame that the company deceives people and presents things in a misleading way. That's why I won't buy any Adata product again because I don't like such moves! I will also include photos related to all the measurements I made. Three stars from me, purely for the issue of the company deceiving all of us buyers. Well done, Adata!