ADATA SC680 480GB Ultra Slim Portable SSD Review

TweakTown's Rating: 84%

The Bottom Line

With the fantastic Price/Performance, the ADATA SC680 is a top offering for mid-range external storage on a budget.

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ADATA usually keeps with a yearly refresh pattern on most of its external storage solutions. So as the Portable SSD craze of November wraps up, we end our coverage with one of the latest designs, the SC680.

The SC680 offers a tiny pocket form factor with a design that looks like the back of your grandpas' leather easy chair. Similar in size to solutions like the Lexar SL100 or new Caldigit Tuff nano, the SC680 packs three capacity options ranging from 240GB to 960GB and two-color options, black or blue.

Connectivity is offered over USB-C Gen2, giving it compatibility with Thunderbolt 3 machines along with with USB-C Gen1 and backward compatibility with Type-C USB 3.0 connections. MSRP of the ADATA SC680 in the 512GB capacity sits at $59.99 with a three-year warranty. You can pick up the larger 960GB platform for $119.99 with the same three-year warranty.

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Packaging offers model and capacity in large print, an image of the drive bottom left.

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The back offers more detail with a specification list and warranty information.

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Unboxing the drive, we have the quick start guide and USB-C cable along with a USB-A to C adapter cable for legacy connections.

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The SC680 offers branding along the bottom with a simple logo. The overall chassis is black plastic, glossy, of course.

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The edge of the drive includes the USB-C connection and activity LED to the left.

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Opening the drive, ADATA has used a custom PCB with SMI2259XT and 3D NAND.

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Factory formatting leaves us with the NTFS filesystem and 447GB of useable capacity.

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Starting off our testing, we have 535 MB/s read and 471 MB/s in CDM.

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Anvils offers up 1286 for read and 1280 for write. Combined, this gives the SC680 a score of 2567.

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Looking closer at file sizes, the SC680 kicks in fully around 128K and holds that 530 MB/s read and 470 MB/s write throughput.

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Last, we wrap testing up with Price/Performance for the SC680, which so happens to be quite good. As seen above, the 480GB model takes third in our current chart.

The ADATA SC680 is a budget storage solution top to bottom and does that quite well. Build quality isn't the greatest with cheap plastics and a hollow feel to the drive, but it can survive a modest fall from 5-10ft, as tested.

Performance is at the top of what can be provided by SATA over USB-C, reaching 535 MB/s read and 471 MB/s write. File size testing showed a pretty consistent drive from 128K through 64M, and wrapping things up Price/Performance netted this solution, thanks to pricing, a solid third place in our charts.

As mentioned, pricing is fantastic, with the 480GB SC680 going for $59.99. There really isn't another competing drive apart from ADATA's SD600Q, making this drive a top option if you want quick external storage with no bells or whistles.

Tyler's Test System Specifications

• Motherboard: ASUS Crosshair VIII Formula X570 (buy from Amazon)
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 (buy from Amazon)
• RAM: Corsair Vengeance 16GB 2x8GB DDR4 3600 (buy from Amazon)
• Cooler: Corsair Hydro H60 (buy from Amazon)
• Case: Corsair Carbide 275R (buy from Amazon)
• OS Storage: Corsair MP600 1TB (buy from Amazon)
• Power Supply: Corsair RM850x (buy from Amazon)
• OS: Microsoft Windows 10 (buy from Amazon)