Enmotus Fuzedrive 1.6TB NVMe M.2 SSD Review

Advanced AI and incredible endurance make Enmotus' Fuzedrive QLC NVMe SSD worth taking a close look at. Here's our full review.

Enmotus Fuzedrive 1.6TB NVMe M.2 SSD
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Senior Hardware Editor
Published
Updated
Manufactured by Enmotus (P200-1600/128)
5 minutes & 45 seconds read time
TweakTown's Rating: 92%
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The Bottom Line

Machine learning and nearly unlimited endurance make the Enmotus Fuzedrive special.

Introduction & Drive Details

Many of you are familiar with Enmotus' Fuzedrive as software that virtualizes two or more storage devices into a single high-performance bootable device. Fuzedrive software employs machine intelligence that promotes or demotes applications and games to and from your fastest storage tier based on usage patterns.

Now Enmotus is stepping into the hardware world with their own Fuzedrive SSD. Enmotus considers their new Fuzedrive SSD to be the "World's Smartest SSD". This SSD uses proprietary AI to bounce your applications or games into and out of the drive's dedicated 128GB SLC partition based upon usage patterns. Additionally, all incoming writes are buffered through this same static SLC partition.

That last sentence is really what makes this drive special. By always writing to SLC first, the Fuzedrive inherently delivers endurance on a massive scale even though it is composed of a QLC flash array. This same hardware without Enmotus Fuzedrive technology is warranted for 530 TBW by others. With Fuzedrive technology onboard, the Enmotus QLC SSD is guaranteed to deliver 3,600 TBW under the most demanding workloads.

With nearly 7x the endurance of competing QLC SSDs, the Enmotus Fuzedrive really solves the endurance quandary inherent to 4-bit flash. This is where we see the real value of the Fuzedrive. After all, large amounts of cheap fast storage that won't easily wear out is something we all want.

Fuzedrive technology is about more than just endurance. The drives machine intelligence works for you, and as a side effect, it will do some tasks faster than normal SSDs composed of the same hardware. One of those things is game level loading. We will demonstrate this later in the review.

Rounding out what this drive can do, is it has the built-in ability to "Fuze" with a second SSD or HDD to create a super-fast virtualized and intelligently managed bootable storage volume. Enmotus calls its Fuzedrive SSD "The World's Smartest SSD," now let's get into this review and see what it can do for you.

Drive Details

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The drive's M.2 PCB is populated with a Phison E12S controller, two DDR3 DRAM packages and four 512GB Micron 96L QLC flash packages. As it stands now, the 1.6TB Fuzedrive is set to retail for $349. However, TweakTown readers can click here and reserve the 1.6TB Fuzedrive for a special price of $249.

Enmotus Fuzedrive 1.6TB NVMe M.2 SSD link

SSD Software

FUZION SSD Toolbox

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When you buy an Enmotus Fuzedrive SSD, you get the complete package. Enmotus will make available to you their exclusive "FUZION" SSD management software. The software will allow you to monitor SSD health, update firmware, and conveniently register your SSD for full warranty protection for 5-years.

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To make your switch to the Fuzedrive as seamless as possible, Enmotus has a free Fuzedrive cloning utility so you can migrate your current system and data to your new disk.

Synthetic Benchmarks: CDM & Anvils

CrystalDiskMark

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So far, so good. Throughout this review, we will be comparing the Fuzedrive to Sabrent's Rocket Q 2TB SSD because it is essentially the same hardware. The Fuzedrive delivers the best sequential read performance we've seen from a QLC SSD to date.

Randoms are a bit different, with the Fuzedrive delivering slightly lower numbers than the 2TB Rocket Q.

Anvil's Storage Utilities

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We are looking for a total read score of 6K. The Fuzedrive gets close, but still delivers a slightly lower score than the Rocket Q 2TB. We are also on the lookout for 15K random read IOPS and the Fuzedrive delivers that to us.

Although not charted, at queue depths exceeding 16, the Fuzedrive surpasses the 2TB Rocket Q's random read performance considerably as demonstrated below.

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The Fuzedrive delivers a bit more than expected in terms of all-out random read performance with an impressive for what it is 353K max random read IOPS performance.

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For comparison, this is what we got from the Rocket Q.

Synthetic Benchmarks: AS SSD & ATTO

AS SSD

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The Fuzedrive scores considerably lower than the Rocket Q 2TB. However, this is a bit misleading because ALL the difference is with 64-threads in play. 64-threads are rarely in play for consumer usage, so the Fuzedrive is essentially keeping pace with the Rocket Q 2TB where it matters.

ATTO

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Sequential write performance at 128K is the same for the Fuzedrive as it is for the Rocket Q 2TB. Now, for what we are most interested in, 128K sequential read performance. Here we find the Fuzedrive delivering the goods better than any Gen3 consumer SSD we've tested to date. Impressive.

Real-World Testing: Transfer Rates & Gaming

Transfer Rates

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Our write transfer is 100GB in size and is composed of more than 62,000 files. Not an easy test, especially for 4-bit SSDs. Impressive. The Fuzedrive essentially ties the Rocket Q 2TB, which also happens to be considerably faster than a whole host of TLC powered SSDs.

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Here we again see a slight advantage for the Fuzedrive when compared with the Rocket Q 2TB. The Fuzedrive delivers the third-best performance we've seen from any Gen3 consumer SSD.

Game Level Loading

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Okay, here is something to get excited about. Comparing the Fuzedrive to all the other Phison powered SSDs on our chart, we find it is the fastest, including its Phison powered TLC brethren.

Compared with the Rocket Q 2TB, the Fuzedrive is much faster when loading game levels. Enmotus says the Fuzedrive has "Gaming AI" and we tend to believe it after seeing this result.

Real-World Testing: PCMark 10 Storage Tests

PCMark 10 Storage Test is the most advanced and most accurate real-world consumer storage test ever made. There are four different tests you can choose from; we run two of them.

The Full System Drive Benchmark and the Quick System Drive Benchmark. The Full System Drive Benchmark writes 204GB of data over the duration of the test. The Quick System Drive Benchmark writes 23GB of data over the duration of the test. These tests directly correlate with user experience. Of the two tests, we feel that the Quick System Drive Test most accurately replicates a typical user experience.

PCMark 10 Full System Drive Benchmark

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Here is where we see another inherent advantage of the Fuzedrive's capabilities. Heavy workloads. The Fuzedrive does considerably better than the similarly configured Rocket Q 2TB when heavy workloads are called for.

PCMark 10 Quick System Drive Benchmark

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When more typical consumer workloads are in play, the Fuzedrive, like the Rocket Q, delivers excellent performance. This is where it matters and where we find the Fuzedrive delivering better than many more expensive TLC-powered SSDs. Excellent.

Final Thoughts

As we see it, the main selling feature of the Fuzedrive is endurance. This is something that we cannot measure for a review, but we can attest to Enmotus's thorough testing and verification of the Fuzedrive's capabilities as we've worked behind the scenes with them since last year. It is quite remarkable that a QLC drive can have an endurance rating better than most MLC SSDs.

As far as the Fuzedrive being the world's smartest SSD, we tend to agree with that statement because overall, the Fuzedrive delivered a bit more than similar hardware, where it matters most. A perfect example of this is gaming, where the Fuzedrive's gaming AI delivered the best game level loading performance we've seen from any 2TB class Phison powered SSD, whether it be TLC or QLC.

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It all comes down to user experience, and as our chart shows, an Enmotus AI-infused SSD can deliver a bit more than conventionally configured SSDs with the same hardware.

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A quick analysis of our testing results reveals several highlights provided by the Enmotus Fuzedrive. CDM showcased the best sequential read performance we've seen from a QLC SSD. Our Anvil's testing showed the Fuzedrive can deliver far better random read performance at high queue depths than other similar hardware.

With ATTO, we were treated to the best 128K sequential performance we've ever gotten from any Gen3 SSD. The Fuzedrive delivered the best-read transfer rate we've seen from a QLC SSD. Gaming performance is the best we've seen from any high capacity Phison controlled SSD. And finally, we came away impressed with the Fuzedrive's heavy workload performance.

The Fuzedrive, equipped with machine intelligence that is constantly optimizing performance and provides seemingly unlimited endurance, is something we can appreciate and find worthy of a hearty TweakTown recommendation.

Pros

  • Endurance
  • Gaming
  • Complimentary Software
  • Machine Learning

Cons

  • Capacity

Performance

95%

Quality

95%

Features

99%

Value

80%

Overall

92%

The Bottom Line

Machine learning and nearly unlimited endurance make the Enmotus Fuzedrive special.

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Enmotus Fuzedrive 1.6TB NVMe M.2 SSD link

Senior Hardware Editor

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Jon joined the TweakTown team in 2013 and has since reviewed 100s of new storage products. Jon became a computer enthusiast when Windows XP launched. He was into water cooling and benching ATI video cards with modded drivers. Jon has been building computers for others for more than 10 years. Jon became a storage enthusiast the day he first booted an Intel X25-M G1 80GB SSD. Look for Jon to bring consumer SSD reviews into the spotlight.

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