Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsReads as advertised, Writes not. Terrible CS. Still a great option for gaming, though
Reviewed in the United States on September 25, 2021
Much ado has been made about ADATA's practice of swapping out the controller and not advertising it. Indeed, even on this Amazon listing, whether you get the one that can write at 3GB/s or--like I did--the one that writes at half that, is basically a crapshoot. However, they STILL offer the best PCIe 3.0 read speeds for the price, which for gaming is far more important than write speeds.
I bought one of these about a year ago, with the old controller, which then mysteriously died recently. There aren't too many reports of this--probably I just got a lemon. I monitored its temperature regularly, and it spent most of its time between 40 and 50 C, sometimes going over 60 when installing a game or some other multi-gigabyte write operation, which are generally short lived thanks to its speed.
Still, one day, I randomly crashed in the middle of a game and...couldn't reboot. The BIOS warned of a faulty disk, but I couldn't believe it--I hadn't come anywhere near its TBW or the warranty period! Once I accepted that the BIOS was right, I started an RMA with ADATA and bought a replacement to tide me over in the meantime--who knows how long the RMA will take!
Now, why didn't I get a different brand, knowing about ADATA's recent shadyness, you may ask? Well, like I said--the competition at this capacity is a good 20% more expensive, at least! Even more so for the Samsung 970 Evo/ Evo Plus! Also, the read speeds aren't affected by the different controller, at least not enough for my gaming needs, so despite everything, it STILL wins.
Now, is that still the case at today's prices? I'm not so sure--~$100 for 1TiB is a great deal, but I think I'd opt for 512GiB at today's prices, in which case the competition isn't too far out of reach. 20-30% translates to $10-20, instead of $30-40. $10-20 to not deal with ADATA? Maybe. $30-40? Eh, I guess they still make a good enough product.
Plus, my experience with their RMA process hasn't given me any additional confidence. RMA processes are notoriously painful, but ADATA's website, at the time of writing, is basically non-functional for RMA's. I started multiple cases and got case numbers, but never got an e-mail about them, nor would they show up in their buried lookup tool. I eventually called their US number, at which some clueless dude thought that my e-mail alias for the RMA with "adata" in it constituted some sort of trademark infringement (it doesn't; that's not how that works!), but did actually send the paperwork over.
I'll update if that goes poorly, but otherwise, you can assume that my drive was eventually replaced after some number of weeks, costing me just the price of shipping the dead drive to their US location.
While the SX8200, crappy controller or otherwise, is still great bang-for-buck for gamers in my view, I consider ADATA to be on thin ice. Between the false advertising and the difficult-to-get-going RMA process, if this replacement drive also fails after a year, I'd rather pony up the $40 just to deal with someone else.
-1 star for the write perf lottery. -1 star for actively difficult RMA process. Know what you're buying, and expect an adversarial relationship with ADATA if anything goes wrong.
UPDATE: Well, I guess I didn't imagine the possibility that USPS would lose the package. So, no opinion on ADATA's RMA per se--it's a pain to get to, but what buggered me this time was...the mail. =/
I didn't buy insurance, either, but, uh, I recommend it, if you ever RMA. $13 seems worth not having to worry about this case.
UPDATE 2022.02.21:
So, the mail found my package about a month after I shipped it, and got it finally made it to ADATA, who promptly sent me a replacement unit that arrived safe and sound. So, at least on that end, the RMA process was smooth!
I think at this point, my rating still stands--the RMA process on ADATA's end was a pain and the controller lottery unforgivable, but at least you won't necessarily be shopping elsewhere!
Still, if I total up even what I might get if I resell my replacement drive, the amount for postage insurance if I had bought it, and so forth, the difference between the price of this drive and that of some of its competitors narrows sharply. I think I would've rather bought e.g .a Samsung and not had the pain. =/
Still, though my situation is unusual, you may still want to factor in the possibility of needing an RMA into your decision. I still think this is a fine drive for gaming, but it's become clear where ADATA gets that low price of theirs.
