ADATA Premier Pro SP900 128GB SSD Review (Raid 0)

There is no doubt that the ‘Premier Pro' naming is somewhat confusing and misleading. Many enthusiast users would assume that the Premier Pro SP900 is the performance grade drive in the ADATA line up, but it isn't. The plainly labelled XPG products are the performance leaders and the Premier Pro are the mainstream range.

In regards to performance, we can't help but feel slightly disappointed with the findings today. As our results show the Sandforce powered ADATA Premier Pro SP900 drive is not an ideal first choice if handling incompressible data is a primary requisite. The standard CrystalDiskMark bandwidth results mirrored the AS SSD findings – close to the bottom of the pile when forced to deal with incompressible data.

The situation improves noticeably when we test with compressible data. Sequential read and write performance parameters almost double in CrystalDiskMark and the ATTO Disk Benchmark also highlights strong results. Around 1,000 MB/s per second in both sequential read and write tests for instance when configured in RAID 0.

Pricing is going to be critical for ADATA in the United Kingdom and while £74.99 at Ebuyer seems like a good deal – we do feel it is slightly overpriced when compared against other 128GB drives currently available. Samsung, Sandisk and Kingston all have cheaper 128GB SSD products available today and some of them outperform the ADATA Premier Pro SP900 in the incompressible data tests.

We have noticed over the years that ADATA do tend to release products in the United Kingdom at a higher pricepoint than some of the leading brands and unless they start to aggressively reduce their prices they are going to find these products a tough sell, especially as the competition is so intense.

Pros:

• Good compressible data performance.
• Acronis software is bundled free.
• 3.5 inch drive bay included.

Cons:

• outperformed by some competitor drives.
• UK pricing could be better.
• weak incompressible data performance.

Kitguru says: The Sp900 is decent, but it faces stiff competition at the price. We would need to see some price reductions before giving it a higher recommendation.

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