ADATA SD700 512GB Portable SSD Review

TweakTown's Rating: 92%

The Bottom Line

ADATA has raised the bar in terms of high capacity portable storage on a budget - the SD700 is definitely worth a look.

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ADATA keeps themselves busy refreshing their storage lineup consistently. We recently covered a trio of portable SSDs from ADATA, all offering a solid amount of value for the consumer but the latest ushers in a smaller form factor for ADATA, something that matches up quite well to the SanDisk Extreme 500.

The SD700 is the latest in an arsenal of portable SSDs from ADATA, this solution is one of the first to grace the market with 3D NAND with accompanying features such as IP68 certification. This solution is hailing out of the durable drive lineup and judging by the design ADATA is right on par with it.

On the exterior, we have a plastic enclosure surrounded by a thick rubber material to dampen any drops that may occur. Capacity options start at 256GB and move through the 512GB model we have in house to a peak capacity of 1TB with marketing performance sitting at 440 MB/s read and 430 MB/s write. Color options include safety yellow and black.

The MSRP of the ADATA SD700 comes in at $169.99 with a three-year warranty.

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Packaging is clean cut and glossy. We have capacity in the bottom right with the model number.

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The backside of the box gives a few more details on the drive including dimensions and weight.

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The scope of delivery includes a rather thick USB 3.0 cable and quick start guide.

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Looking at the drive, we have a thick rubber surround protecting the edges of the enclosure including the USB 3.0 port. A LED mounted on top gives an activity indicator.

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ADATA is using the USB 3.0 Type-B connector for this solution over the Type-C that's gaining so much popularity.

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Diving right in, we found a JMicron USB 3.0 controller inside this unit.

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The SSD portion is an SU800 from ADATA featuring an SM2258 controller and 3D NAND from Micron.

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Connecting up the drive and running it through our trusted USB flash benchmark, we got pretty consistent results - 440 MB/s read and 440 MB/s write on average.

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Looking at our charts, the SD700 matches up quite well to the first generation of portable SSDs at 435 MB/s read and 440 MB/s write.

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Rolling the performance data up and throwing it in our price v performance chart above, ADATA has a solid competitor on their hands, second only to the SanDisk Extreme 900.

The SD700 is a great addition to the durable lineup from ADATA. The build quality is quite good for a portable solution with both rigid plastics and rubber surround aiding in this solutions IP68 certification.

Performance is on par with first-generation portable SSDs with reads and writes meeting marketing expectations around 440MB/s. USB flash benchmark was consistent on all three runs starting at 440 MB/s read and write from 16 to 1M file sizes. Continuing, performance started a slow decent from 400 MB/s at 512K to 150 MB/s at 16K. Price V. Performance was quite generous to the SD700 and thanks to the inclusion of 3D NAND the price of this solution is quite low for 512GB.

Overall, the SD700 is a low-cost high-capacity drive for consumers wanting a portable solution to take with them on the go.

Tyler's Test System Specifications

• Motherboard: ASUS Maximus IX Hero (buy from Amazon)
• CPU: Intel Core i7 7700K (buy from Amazon) / (Read our Review)
• Memory: G.SKILL TridentZ DDR4 3200 (buy from Amazon)
• Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 Hybrid (buy from Amazon)
• OS Storage: Intel 730 480GB SSD (buy from Amazon) / (Read our Review)
• Secondary Storage: MyDigitalSSD BPX 512GB SSD (buy from Amazon)
• Case: EVGA DG-86 (buy from Amazon)
• Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA 750 P2 (buy from Amazon)
• Networking: ASUS PCE-AC88 AC3100 (buy from Amazon)
• Networking: ASUS ROG 10G Express
• Networking: ASUS Thunderbolt EX3 (buy from Amazon)
• OS: Microsoft Windows 10 (buy from Amazon)