Addlink S70 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD review - Introduction

Addlink S70 1TB NVMe PCIe SSD (3400 MB/s - 1TB -114 USD)
Enthusiast M.2.Class SSD performance for a mainstream price

How good (or bad) is a low priced M2 SSD bought from Amazon? We received an email from Addlink claiming they offer an SSD (Addlink S70 1TB NVMe PCIe 3x4 SSD) that often gets compared being 'a Samsung EVO 970's nightmare' in relation the price of just 114 USD for 1TB. The S70 is available in four flavors: the 1TB version I tested (currently $114 on Amazon), a 256GB model, a 512GB model  and a 2TB model (currently $245 on Amazon). Yes, that is darn inexpensive. Addlink is claiming numbers that run into the 3400 MB/s; Write Speeds and up to 3000 MB/s for these M2 SSDs, at 11 cents per GB. Heck, they even offer 5 years warranty. The TBW (TeraBytes Written—the total amount of data that a company is willing to guarantee can be written to the drive) ratings of 350/600/1200/2000 for the 256GB/512GB/1TB/2TB drives seem quite up there as well.

The specs are great but will this unit deliver what it claims? SSD is based on that familiar Phison's PS5012-E12 controller and of course, has been fitted with 64-layer TLC written NAND from Toshiba. The performance will vary depending on volume size. The SSD is a Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe 1.3) M.2 form factor SSD, it has been fitted with new Vertically stacked NAND TLC. The performance numbers of a proper SATA3 SSD offers these days are simply excellent, but with the more niche NVMe SSDs you can easily quadruple performance, which offers serious numbers. The unit follows a smaller M.2 2280 form factor (8cm) so it will fit on most ATX motherboards capable of M.2 just fine. Anyway, wanna see how fast it really is? Next page and onwards into the review then.