Apacer PT920 Commando 240GB PCIe SSD Review

Packaging and a Closer Look

The Packaging

The outer packaging highlights the gamer aspects of the drive while showing the drive itself and the capacity on the front.

On the backside, you’ll find more information about the feature highlights and specifications. It’s a positive thing to see all specifications listed and not just the highlights.

Removing the outer wrapper exposes a beautiful black hard-box with golden Apacer logo.

And inside is the drive itself, wrapped safely in a foam cut-out.

The Accessories

There aren’t any accessories with this Apacer PT920 Commando PCIe SSD, not even an installation guide. While I doubt that many people  look at those guides, I was a bit surprised not to find one.

The Details

Now that we know all the official details of the drive, it is time to take a closer look at it. Looking from the top and bottom, the drive doesn’t have the same appeal as it does from the front. The top has the Commando logo which is difficult to see here due to the lighting. Other than that, there isn’t a lot to say.

The bracket is solid without air vents. That is probably due to the general cover design which is meant to spread the heat out from the drive in all other direction. The other three sides of the drive are open to allow an airflow in and out. Instead of having a cooling fan, the design is made to redirect your existing airflow into the casing and thereby cool the inserted SSD.

The smudge you see on the bracket in the image below is just from a piece of tape. The rest of the design is something I’ll leave to be judged by everyone individually. It’s a matter of taste and preference.

Insides Out

Now that we’ve seen what it looks like on the outside, we’ll take it apart and look inside. I’ve already revealed what drive is inside on the previous page, so that’s no surprise at this point.

It is easy to remove the cover, and we find a classic HHHL PCIe adapter board inside. The surprising part here is that there is no actual contact between the SSD and the casing. I would have expected thermal pads connecting the NAND and controller with the casing.

The PCIe bridge board is quite classic in its build-up. It is compatible with all other length M.2 modules, allowing you to upgrade to another drive down the line and keep the Commando casing.

The installed drive isn’t a big surprise as such. It is the Apacer Z280 M.2 NVMe SSD which we previously reviewed. A solid drive which delivers as promised.

Apacer’s Z280 drive is dual sided with four NAND chips. This smaller 240GB version has one RAM chip whereas the larger 480GB will have two.

The controller is the well known Phison PS5007-11, also known as the Phison E7. It is a quad-core controller with eight channels, built for use with NVMe drive. We’ve seen this controller in a lot of other drives too.