ADATA Falcon 1 TB M.2 NVMe SSD Review - Final Words & Conclusion

Final Words & Conclusion

Sincerely, after reading up on some reviews on the web, I expected a bit more from this ADATA Falcon? Surely it's not an inferior performing product, contrary, but a website or two have given this product 5-star ratings, and I am a bit confused about that. Everything for this SSD has been designed to be a value proposition. You can see that by the 4-channel Realtek controller and DRAM-less design (which only works with an up-to-date Windows 10 installation). These two factors come at a certain cost, and when you look deep enough, you'll see that the SSD in real-world trace test is performing at very average levels. If we dig a little deeper, you'll learn that writes seem to complicate this SSD. Look at the Crystamlark results, for example, you'll notice significantly reduced writes at 4KQ1T1, see below, and compare. 

ADATA Falcon 1TB Gen3 x4

Sabrent Rocket 1TB Gen3 x4

The point I am trying to make here is that there is competition out there battling with the Falcon in the same price class, so I am not saying this is a bad performing SSD, ni Sir. But there are better offerings out there in a close to the same price range. The Sabrent Rocket is one of them, with easily doubled up numbers in sequential and far better Q1T1 4k writes and tripled TWB values that of the ADATA  Falcon. So the trace tests you have seen from the PCMark suite for example completely load and stress up the SSD, and it is here where the FACLON has a harder time to deliver in the performance bracket where it needs to be. And I do deem the PCMark 8 trace tests to be among the best benchmark series in our test suite.  Now we also need to place it all in a relative matter, this SSD does reach 3 GB/sec, but only under the exact right workload.

Concluding

Quite honestly, we're a little puzzled with the Falcon and for that matter some of media reviews out there, after the initial raving reviews on the web, we expected a superbly performing drive under the assumption that reviews are objective. The reality is this, it is an okay NVMe SSD, but it is just that. The read performance tagged at 3 GB/sec only visualizes in a handful of synthetic benchmarks, and as you have seen, the rest of the performance is mainstream for a modern NVMe SSD. Now don't get me wrong as that is plenty fast no-matter how you look at it, but calling this 5-star premium product like some like you to believe, that's just not going to fly. It's a very decent and even good mainstream NVMe drive, but it is just that. That remark aside, the SSD is plenty fast for any reasonable and gaming workload. It won't hit TLC write holes quickly and can keep up its performance quite well. Currently, ADATA is listing this 1 TB model at 130 USD, retail prices indicate much higher prices, though, so please do be careful with that as for a tenner or two more, there are just fantastic alternatives out there that we'd easily recommend over this one. If you can find the 1TB Falcon for the advertised 130 USD, then you're looking at 13 cents per GB, and therein is value to be found. Once prices settle at 10 cents per GB, it would even hit a sweet-spot. The TBW values are 600 TB for this 1 TB model, meaning if you write 50 GB a day each day of the year, you'll pass 30 years of lifespan, so no worries there. That combined with a 5-years warranty make this a robust offering we can recommend. But the competition is fierce, with often double the write perf and TBW values at more or less the same amount of money. 

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