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Acer, in conjunction with Chinese chip manufacturer BIWIN, has entered the SSD storage market with drives for both home and professional markets. You may not have heard of BIWIN (BIWIN Storage Technology Company Limited) but the company was created in 2010 and designs, produces, and markets consumer flash storage and memory for several famous computer brands. Acer's new storage portfolio includes 2.5in SATA SSDs (SA100, RE100), M.2 SATA (RE100) and M.2 PCIe Gen3 NVMe (FA100) drives.
The entry-level SA100 comes in a range of five capacities; 120GB, 240GB, 480GB, 960GB and the flagship model, the 1.92TB drive which we are reviewing here. At the heart of the SA100 is a Maxio MAS0902A-B2C controller. The controller is a DRAM-less 4-channel IC and at just 9mm by 9mm, it's one of the most compact NAND controllers around.
The 1.92TB SA100 is rated as up to 560MB/s and 508MB/s for reads and writes respectively. Using the ATTO benchmark the best read figure we saw was 537MB/s with writes at 478MB/s, both short of the official numbers. However, using the CrystalDiskMark benchmark we could confirm both official figures with best results of 562MB/s for reads and 514MB/s for writes.
As for random 4K performance, the SA100 is rated up to 76,000 IOPS for reads and up to 77,000 IOPS for writes. We couldn't hit the maximum figures during testing, the best read figure we saw was 75,667 IOPS (QD8) with writes at 71,721 IOPS at a QD of 4.
Acer told us the UK MSRP for the 1.92TB model is £169.99 and availability is expected at Scan from mid-September. We also found the drive on Newegg.com, shipping from the US, for £163.19 (inc VAT) HERE, with postage an additional £20 to the UK.
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Pros
- All-around performance.
- Decent endurance.
Cons
- Write performance is disappointing in some of our tests.
- 3-year warranty is a bit mean.
KitGuru says: It's an interesting move by Acer to try and grab market share in a hugely competitive consumer storage market. The 1.92TB SA100 performs well and Acer has given it every chance with competitive pricing.
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