Adata SD820 review: A compact, fast, and durable portable SSD

Best Prices Today: Adata SD820 SSD

Being unabashedly shape-conscious, I used to be susceptible to liking the Adata SD820 proper off the bat. Its shiny blue highlights are a bit garish in shiny gentle, however I like that — makes it simple to identify within the wild. The indisputable fact that it’s a superb 20Gbps performer with 2TB on board simply sweetened the deal. Attractive and helpful. What’s to not like?

Well, one factor. If you write an excessive amount of knowledge without delay (greater than 20 % of capability), the drive will run out of secondary cache and sluggish to round 130MBps. Otherwise, the SD820 turned within the quickest actual world efficiency we’ve seen from a 20Gbps SSD.

Adata SD820: Features

The SD820 is a small, flat-ish, bright-blue-and-black rectangle measuring round 2.65-inches lengthy by 1.5-inches huge by 0.4-inches thick. It weighs a mere 0.9 ounces.

It’s greater than appropriate for outside use in line with its IP68 rating. If you aren’t feeling curious sufficient to click on on that hyperlink, IP68 means the SD820 is dustproof and might survive immersion in 10 toes of water. That’s nearly as good because it will get for client gadgets.

The SD820 sports activities a feminine Type-C connector protected by a captive plastic cap and Adata features a Type-C to Type-C cable.

While the colour scheme could seem a bit garish to some, it additionally means you’ll have the ability to extra simply discover the little sucker for those who drop it on the path. Neon orange, lime, or pink are a bit higher for that in my expertise, however the blue will do.

The SD820 is 20Gbps USB 3.2×2, the controller is a Silicon Motion SM2322, and the NAND is layered QLC. USB 3.2×2 is 20Gbps when hooked up to a devoted USB 3.2×2 port and a few USB4 ports, however it drops to 10Gbps or decrease in most Thunderbolt ports, and all non-USB4 ports.

Adata warranties the SD820 for 5 years, which is 2 years extra beneficiant than most exterior SSDs. The firm didn’t present a TBW (TeraBytes that could be Written) ranking, however QLC of this kind (older) is mostly round 250TBW per terabyte of capability.

Adata SD820: Pricing

The SD820 will likely be obtainable in $102/1TB and $179/2TB as of mid-November 2025, and finally in 4TB capability. Not certain concerning the value but, however I’d guess round $400. That’s not unhealthy in any respect for IP68-rated 20Gbps SSDs. You can go a bit cheaper with out the IP-rating, and much more costly is you need higher write efficiency with massive quantities of information. As to that…

Adata SD820: Speed

With regular quantities of information, the SD820 is among the many quickest 20Gbps SSDs we’ve examined. Faster in sequential throughput than random ops, however nonetheless very quick total.

Although 4K reads are aggressive, the SD820 fell nicely behind its rivals in 4K writing. Overall, not unhealthy, not nice.

Where the SD820 actually introduced dwelling the bacon was in our 48GB switch assessments. It shaved fairly just a few seconds off the instances of the the 2 listed opponents, the Corsair EX400U and Crucial X10 (chosen due to their comparable bulk) and is the quickest of all of the 20Gbps SSDs and enclosures we’ve examined.

The SD820 was really on tempo for a lot quicker time within the 450GB write, when at across the 85 % mark it ran out of secondary cache (second picture beneath). The QLC’s 130MBps native write velocity dropped the ocean anchor on a aggressive time.

Here’s a display seize of the native write slowdown on the 85 % mark. The QLC should be of the older selection as we’ve seen newer QLC keep round 400Mbps to 500MBps. But mainly, for those who write this a lot knowledge frequently (few do — even us outdoors of testing), you may go for a TLC SSD.

For actual world transfers of regular measurement, the SD820 is the moveable 20Gbps SSD to beat. However, customers frequently writing very massive quantities of information, one thing sporting TLC NAND and USB4 may serve them higher in the long term.

Adata SD820: Conclusion

If you’re searching for rugged storage at an honest value and just like the look, give the Adata SD820 a superb, onerous look. The SD820 isn’t fairly pro-level, however it’s simply quick sufficient and huge sufficient for the typical consumer, particularly these working within the wild.

Adata SD820: How we check

Drive assessments presently make the most of Windows 11 24H2, 64-bit working off of a PCIe 4.0 Samsung 990 Pro in an Asus Z890-Creator WiFi (PCIe 4.0/5.0) motherboard. The CPU is a Core Ultra i5 225 feeding/fed by two Crucial 64GB DDR5 4800MHz modules (128GB of reminiscence complete).

Both 20Gbps USB and Thunderbolt 5 are built-in into the motherboard and Intel CPU/GPU graphics are used. Internal PCIe 5.0 SSDs concerned in testing are mounted in a Asus Hyper M.2 x16 Gen5 adapter card siting in a PCIe 5.0 slot.

We run the CrystalDiskMark 8.04 (and 9), AS SSD 2, and ATTO 4 artificial benchmarks (to maintain article size down, we solely report one) to search out the storage machine’s potential efficiency, then a collection of 48GB and 450GB transfers assessments utilizing Windows Explorer drag and drop to point out what customers will see throughout routine copy operations, in addition to the far quicker FastCopy run as administrator to point out what’s attainable.

A 20GBps two-SSD RAID 0 array on the aforementioned Asus Hyper M.2 x16 Gen5 is used because the second drive in our switch assessments. Formerly the 48GB assessments have been executed with a RAM disk serving that goal.

Each check is carried out on a NTFS-formatted and newly TRIM’d drive so the outcomes are optimum. Note that in regular use, as a drive fills up, efficiency could lower resulting from much less NAND for secondary caching, in addition to different components. This subject has abated considerably with the present crop of SSDs using extra mature controllers and much quicker, late-generation NAND.

Note that our testing MO evolves and these outcomes could not match these from earlier articles. Only comparisons contained in the article are 100% legitimate as these outcomes are gathered utilizing the present {hardware} and MO.