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A few weeks back, we did a review on the ADATA Swordfish NVMe, a new release SSD that was intended as a value solution for the every day PC user, possibly transitioning to the SSD. That SSD was accredited with our Top Value award as it provided decent performance at a low price, and with a 5-year limited warranty to boot. Parallel to that value SSD release, ADATA released another SSD, affectionately branded the ADATA Falcon, that was intended to hit the SSD industry from two angles, value and performance. We have the ADATA Falcon on the test bench today and this report will provide you with our thoughts on whether this just might be a purchase you would want to make.
A rather embarassing confession if I may. It’s actually a bit funny to all but ADATA I am sure but, apologies were made and we are back at the table with this replacement Falcon SSD once received. Both the Sword and Falcon had originally been received together. Since we were testing the ADATA Sword first, we elected to take pictures of the Falcon, which meant removing that gold heatsink we see in this picture. Little did we know that the glue ADATA used to fasten the heatsink tothe components was so strong, we must have broken a component onnection while removing it; the SSD was toast totally of our own doing. DO NOT remove the heat sink.
The ADATA Falcon is PCIe 3.0 x4 (four lane) M.2 SSD of the 2280 (80mm) form factor and uses the NVMe 1.3 protocol. It is available in capacities of 256GB, 512GB, 1TB and 2TB and its performance is variable on capacity as shown here:
The ADATA Falscon also has AES 256-Bit encryption, supports LDPC (Low density parity Check), is a DRAM-less SSD that utilizes the NVMe HMB (Host Memory Buffer) in Windows 10, and has a 5-year limited warranty.
Typically we might have the SSD stripped down to it’s bare components, but this gold metal heatsink is not removable without damaging the ADATA Falcon. Below this is the Realtek RTS5762DL 4-channel NVMe controller along with four pieces of Kioxia BiCS4 96-layer 3D TLC NAND flash memory.
The bottom of the ADATA Falcon is bare with the branding sticker affixed that describes the product. When checking Amazon, we see pricing of the ADATA Falcon at $54.99 (256GB), $69.99 (512GB), $129.99 (1TB) and $239.99 (2TB).
Two great utilities that ADATA provides totally for the ADATA Falcon are their SSD Toolbox and a free copy of Acronis True Image HD software.