ADATA SP550 M.2 240GB Solid State Drive Review

Bohs Hansen / 8 years ago

Final Thoughts

Pricing

The Adata Premier SP550 M.2 SSD with 240GB capacity will set you back $74.99 or £63.99 through Amazon at the time of writing.

adata_sp550_m2-chart-pricepergb

Overview

Adata’s Premier SP550 240GB M.2 2280 solid state drive is a simple drive that could serve you very well as hard disk replacement. It is the simplest form factor that you can get as the M.2 form factor eliminates the need for cables altogether and it is also the form factor for ultrabooks and thin netbooks – there simply isn’t room for anything bigger in those. And the latter is also one of the places where the SP550 M.2 shines and was made for as it comes with the Device Sleep function that will enhance the battery time.

The SP550 is built around the Silicon Motion SM2256 controller and with Adata TLC NAND and comes with great features such as SLC caching and DRAM buffer cache for improved performance. It also features RAID engine and data shaping for endurance and longevity. The SSD also comes with LDPC Error Correction Code (ECC). All that put together makes a great SSD.

Let us talk a bit performance too. The SP550 performs really great at most times, but there are a few drops in the performance here and there when the technologies behind the scenes are trying to catch up. In that regard, we should keep in mind that at the time of review, the drive has been on the market for quite some time and that the controller in use basically was the first one made for TLC NAND. That comes with some disadvantages which mostly are noticeable during continuous data transfers, i.e. copying a lot or large files at once. The speeds will drop below HDD levels after some time in this scenario. Other than that, it does good and would be a great addition or replacement for a mechanical hard drive. You’ll boot faster, you’ll use less power, and all your apps and games will load faster too. The latter is one of the areas where the SP550 M.2 shines and did very well in the benchmarks as the PC Mark 8 tests for games turned out some great results. When you play games, you read more data from the drive than you write and reading data is something that the SP550 is good at.

Pros

Faster, lighter, and more efficient than HDDs
Great read speeds and gaming performance
SSD Toolbox software
Fair price

Cons

Low scores at continuous write operation

“The Adata SP550 is a drive with good features and perfect for ultrabook usage, but it can also serve you well as a boot drive in your stationary M.2 featured gaming system.”