ADATA SE900G RGB USB 3.2 20Gbps External SSD Review

There seems to be much confusion with respect to USB speeds these days, and it’s all the result of the newest USB 3.2 Gen 2 design.  The standard for the newest USB release is USB 3.2 Gen 2 which will attain data transfer speed of 10Gbps (1GB/s) with newer compatible systems.  A step up from that is USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 (20Gbps) which doubles this performance to 2GB/s. the next best thing to Thunderbolt 3.  Just as a quick side not, USB 3.2 2×2 (20Gbps) IS NOT compatible with Thunderbolt 3 and, if you plug a Gen 2×2 device into Tbt3, you will only see speeds of 1GB/s data transfer.

Connected to our newest Z490 Test Bench for todays report is the ADATA SE900G 1TB External SSD, one of the few examples available that provide for the latest and greatest 2GB/s data transfer speeds… in a compatible system of course.  Another rather unique feature of the SE900G is that it is a RGB portable drive and, when connected, has a very attractive multi-color pattern on the top of the SSD.

The SE900G is available in capacities of 512GB, 1TB and 2TB and it connects by a Type-C to Type-C connector which provides listed performance of 2000MB/s read and write.  It also comes with a Type-C to Type-A cable which provides for compatibility of USB 3 at up to 540MB/s.

The ADATA SE900G measures 4.36 x 2.6 x 0.65 inches, weighs 5.64oz, and is compatible with Windows 8 and above, MacOS X 10.6 and later, Linux Kernel 2.6 or later, or Android 5.0 or later.  It has a 3-year warranty and power to this device is bus driven through the same cable that you are transferring data.

Checking Amazon pricing, we only see availability of the 512Gb and 1TB versions right now, and they are priced at $99.99 and $159.99.  Let’s take a look at a few benchmarks.

ATTO DISK BENCHMARK VER. 3.05

ATTO Disk Benchmark is perhaps one of the oldest benchmarks going and is definitely the main staple for manufacturer performance specifications. ATTO uses RAW or compressible data and, for our benchmarks, we use a set length of 256mb and test both the read and write performance of various transfer sizes ranging from 0.5 to 8192kb. Manufacturers prefer this method of testing as it deals with raw (compressible) data rather than random (includes incompressible data) which, although more realistic, results in lower performance results.

CRYSTAL DISK BENCHMARK VER. 8.0.1 x64

Crystal Disk Benchmark is used to measure read and write performance through sampling of random data which is, for the most part, incompressible. Performance is virtually identical, regardless of data sample so we have included only that using random data samples.

ANVIL STORAGE UTILITIES PROFESSIONAL

Anvil’s Storage Utilities (ASU) are the most complete test bed available for the solid state drive today. The benchmark displays test results for, not only throughput but also, IOPS and Disk Access Times. Not only does it have a preset SSD benchmark, but also, it has included such things as endurance testing and threaded I/O read, write and mixed tests, all of which are very simple to understand and use in our benchmark testing.

TxBENCH

TxBench is one of our newly discovered benchmarks that we works much the same as Crystal Diskmark, but with several other features.  Advanced load benchmarking can be configured, as well as full drive information and data erasing via secure erase, enhanced secure erase, TRIM and overwriting.  Simply click on the title for a free copy.

REPORT SUMMARY AND FINAL THOUGHTS

To date, there are very few external SSDs on the market which can move data at 2GB/s, as this ADATA SE900G can. Our reports on the others can be found here, none of which have RGB included.  All 20Gbps drives that we have testedto date achieve top performance of 2GB/s read and write which is the next best thing to Thunderbolt 3.  The difference between the SE900G and the others comes with warranty length; the SE900G has 3-year limited warranty, where the others include a 5-year warranty.  There is a give and take here with respect to that warranty difference, in that, the ADATA SE900G 1TB External SSD is advertised at $40 less than the others.

Check ADATA SE900G External SSD Pricing at Amazon.