ADATA SE900G 2TB USB 3.2 Gen2x2 Portable SSD Review

TweakTown's Rating: 94%

The Bottom Line

ADATA has put together one of the best performing portable drives to date with the SE900G, and it won't break the bank!

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Nearly six years ago, we had our first test of USB 3.1 and Type-C with another ADATA product, the SE730. Since then, the market has evolved very quickly, with Type-C being the dominant form of connectivity for both USB and Thunderbolt technologies today. The technology behind USB, too, has evolved with several generations being housed within the USB 3.2 specification, the highest form of this connectivity being Gen2x2 which offers 20Gbps of bandwidth.

WD and Seagate were quite early to market with Gen2x2 devices, making it a niche product that only a few motherboards could take advantage of. With the launch of Intel Z590, this technology will be found a nearly every motherboard, most often through the front panel USB-C header.

Timing this launch so perfectly benefits ADATA by allowing the technology to mature and prices come down. This helps consumers by enabling more to get their hands-on drive. That said, the SE900G will come in the typical "bar" form factor illuminated with RGB offering capacities of 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB. Marketing shows read and write at 2000 MB/s and a weight of 160g.

MSRP of the ADATA SE900G in the 2TB capacity comes in at $289.99 with a three-year warranty.

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Packaging for the SE900 is vibrant and full of RGB color. Capacity bottom right at 2TB with notes of this drive being suitable for a game drive.

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On the backside, you will find a features list with requirements and package contents to the right.

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Unboxing, you will receive a USB-C and Type-A to C legacy cable next to the drive. The drive itself offering a reflective black appearance with ADATA branding.

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The edge of the drive does have an activity light next to the USB-C ports.

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I pulled the SE900 apart to get a look at the internal components. The enclosure to the right is set up to cool both the ASMedia 2364 USB 3.2 Gen2x2 controller and the NVMe drive in use. The drive in our samples was an SX8200 2TB.

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In use, the SE900 lights up with a predetermined RGB wave.

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The capacity of the ADATA SE900G is 1.87TB factory formatted NTFS.

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Kicking off our testing, the SE900G was able to hit 1974 MB/s read and 1960 MB/s write.

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Sustained performance using our 200GB test file was 1297 MB/s. It took the SE900G 2 ½ minutes to complete the operation.

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Price/Performance gives the SE900G top honors taking over for the Extreme Pro and P50.

I was quite surprised by the SE900G. It's not the typical plastic enclosure portable SSD we have become so accustomed to. Instead, ADATA has put together a rather solid hybrid solution with a full metal back to dissipate heat generated by the NVMe and PCB. While I'm not a huge fan of RGB'ing everything, this drive isn't too distracting as the lighting is subdued, waving across the top of the enclosure.

In testing, we nearly hit marketing performance and did come up with 1974 MB/s read and 1960 MB/s write in CDM. The sustained performance reached 1297 MB/s write. Over 2.5 minutes it took the drive to handle the 200GB file. In daily use, we did have one issue with the included USB-C cable not working properly, and that was quickly resolved by grabbing another cable from the drawer.

Pricing is legit with the SE900G, the 2TB model coming in at $289.99, a full $60 cheaper than the P50 from WD, and $70 under the FireCuda Gaming SSD from Seagate.

TweakTown External Storage Test System

• CPU: Intel Core i7 11700K
• Motherboard: ROG Maximus XIII Hero
• RAM: Team Xtreem 2x8G DDR4 4500 (buy from Amazon)
• Cooler: MSI MEG K360
• OS Storage: Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 1TB (buy from Amazon)
• Power Supply: Corsair RM750X (buy from Amazon)
• OS: Microsoft Windows 10 (buy from Amazon)