XPG SX8200 Pro 512GB 3D NAND NVMe Gen3x4 PCIe M.2 2280 Solid State Drive R/W up to 3350/2350MB/s SSD (ASX8200PNP-512GT-C)

I recently upgraded my MacBook with the ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro 1TB 3D NAND NVMe Gen3x4 PCIe M.2 SSD, and it feels like I've got a brand new machine. This upgrade deserves a solid 5-star rating for several reasons:Incredible Speed Boost: The most noticeable improvement is the speed. My MacBook boots up significantly faster, and applications launch almost instantaneously. File transfers that used to take minutes now complete in seconds. It's not just an upgrade; it's a total transformation in terms of performance.High Capacity Storage: With 1TB of space, I have more than enough room for all my files, applications, and multimedia. It's a relief not having to worry about running out of space or managing storage as frequently.Reliable and Durable: The 3D NAND technology not only provides excellent performance but also ensures reliability and durability. I feel confident that this SSD will last a long time, maintaining its speed and integrity.Important Note on Compatibility: To make this SSD work with my MacBook, I used the Sintech NGFF M.2 NVMe adapter. This is a crucial piece of information for any MacBook users considering this upgrade. The adapter was easy to install and worked flawlessly, ensuring the SSD was compatible with my MacBook.Value for Money: Considering the performance boost and the new lease of life it has given to my MacBook, the price is absolutely worth it. It’s a cost-effective way to extend the life of an older MacBook, rather than purchasing a new one.In conclusion, the ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro with the Sintech adapter has been an outstanding upgrade for my MacBook. If you're looking to rejuvenate an older MacBook and get performance that rivals current models, I can't recommend this SSD enough. Five stars for breathing new life into my old machine!

This is the last component to complete a new build. The main driver of the performance I was looking for was to be able to play games on a 1440 monitor smoothly with settings on High. I was prepared to wait a few months for prices on M2 NVME drives to come down. Cyber Monday did it. Pulled the trigger and the next day this appeared on my doorstep.The Motherboard I picked (Asrock Z390 Steel Legend) came with standoffs and screws for 2 of these babies and physical installation went as expected. I agree with other posts I have seen, these screws need to be larger. A magnetic screwdriver is your friend.The drive needs to be initialized in Win10 then formatted, this went smoothly, and quickly, lol. Adata has two different cloning utilities on their website and I tried the Macrium Reflect. The other one requires a registration code from Adata which proved difficult to obtain. Cloning seemed to be successful but the system would not boot from this drive at first.I ended up doing what I should have done from the beginning, doing a fresh install of Win10 from a a USB boot stick with the existing SSD disconnected. This worked fabulously, took about ten minutes.System specs:I7 9700KF running stock speeds for nowAsrock Z390 Steel Legend16G Corsair memory running at 3200, Cas level 16Adata ZPG 8200 Pro 1 Tb M2 NVMEAdata SU750 1 Tb SSDSeagate Baracuda 2 Tb HDASUS internal DVD writer (yea I know I'm a throwback)Corsair 750 Gold 80 PSUGigabyte 2070 Super Gaming OC GPUCorsair H100i Pro CPU coolerbeQuiet Pure Base 600 caseDisk benchmarks: Sequential reads only listedSeagate HD: 224MbsAdata SSD: 548 MbsAdata 8200 Pro M2: 3480 Mbs !It hits all advertised speeds. Cold boot takes 20 seconds. Screen loading on games is about cut in half compared to running off the SSD. Installation of programs/games is no longer a waiting game, it just happens.My last install of a new drive was a Samsung 860 500Gb SSD. Samsung Magician actually worked to clone it but it only works on Samsung drives. I would recommend going straight to a fresh install of Windows for this drive.I did talk to Adata support during the cloning attempt. I already had around 400Gb of games on the SSD prior to the M2 install and didn't want to kill my 1 Tb download allowance from Comcast for the month. Their support person was knowledgeable and friendly and said that the Macrium software usually works.Would I buy this again? Oh yes, it is in the top tier of performance for these drives and it is finally priced right, $105 for the 1 Tb version on Cyber Monday. It affects loading of any program you use, the system is now incredibly snappy. Even just web browsing! If you are still running off of a hard drive a SSD will improve your performance quite noticeably, but now that prices are coming down finally on these M2 NVME drives, just skip the SSD entirely. I wish I could have afforded the M2 drive long ago, lol.One question remains- longevity. These critters are small and don't have a lot of surface area for heat dissipation and it was a concern. The drive will automatically throttle back if heat rises beyond a threshold value. The MB I ended up with comes with its' own heat sinks for M2 drives, which reinstalled easily (although tiny screws again). I've been keeping an eye on temp on this thing and it has not been a problem at all. It is said that heat only becomes an issue under heavy sustained writes lasting over 110 seconds or so. My heaviest use case so far was probably the Windows install. But it showed no real heat increase, the transfer being limited by the USB 3.1 speed. The M2 was just loafing along at 7% or 8% utilization.I highly recommend this drive, it is the finishing touch on this system!

The 1TB model is the right blend of cheap, fast, and good. It's got some interesting characteristics that you need to keep in mind though.The nand controller in here, is an SMI SM2262EN and it's been setup in a way that people may not expect. Namely, when you sequential write to the drive it'll go full blast for about 15-20% of whatever free space you have on the drive. Empty 1TB drive = ~3500Mbps until about 150GB. Then you'll see your speed get cut anywhere from 50-80% while the nand controller adjusts its strategies for writing data. This write strategy should be invisible to most people. But, you really don't want to fill up this drive. Which is probably the exact opposite thing you want to do with storage. :)I suspect many people bought smaller capacity version of this, and have inadvertently hamstrung themselves. When buying SSD's with this specific controller, you want to buy the biggest capacity one you can afford or make sure that the system it is installed in doesn't do big data moves.Having said that, even at it's slowest max sequential write, it's still faster than a SATA SSD. If you're the type of person that leaves all your data on a NAS or external storage and just need a super fast boot drive, this thing is fantastic for the price. The reigning king of the cheap low tier NVME drives, especially when the 1TB model hits a lightning deal. If you're going to load up the drive and leave it at like 75% full all the time, you'll probably want to look elsewhere. The SLC Cache strategy is going to bug the heck out of you and probably won't pass muster on SSD benchmarks in that state.