Angelbird 512GB wrk SSD Review

Simple packaging – with the drive protected behind a clear plastic window. The box is white with minor blue accenting.

Angelbird are bundling a copy of ‘System Reflection Pro' with the drive (The ‘Survival Key' version). You can see more about this software over here.

The Angelbird 512GB wrk drive is simple looking, but actually very effective. Upon close inspection you can see the grain of the aluminum chassis. Always a good sign of a quality design. The drive measures 7mm deep making it compatible for the smallest ultra portable laptop configurations.

It measures 7.0 x 69.8 x 100.2 mm and weighs 60 grams.

Removing the SSD from the chassis is very straightforward – it actually slides out, when two screws are removed. No messing around with hex drivers or glued covers. Other manufacturers should take note.

Our first look at the Silicon Motion SM2246EN controller.

The SM2246EN controller supports TLC, MLC and SLC NAND flash and the firmware is said to be robust and tweakable to suit many environments. This is a 4 channel solid state controller and is said to deliver greater performance than many 8 channel controllers. Power consumption is also highly optimised. Angelbird rate this drive to take 1.97 watts power under load, dropping to 0.25 watts when idle.

The 512GB wrk is rated at up to 563 MB/s sustained read and 450 MB/s sustained write, with IOPS performance up to 72,000. Access time is rated around 0.1ms. Synchronous MLC Flash NAND is used in this drive. It has overload protection, TRIM support, ECC EMS protection and SMART protection.

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