With many of us working from home right now, or going back and forth from a home office to your workplace thanks to the global pandemic that is still going on, having reliable external storage can’t be more important. External storage, whether it be an external hard drive, USB drive or more, having reliable and fast storage for your files or games on the go is always a good thing. Enter the ADATA SE760 External SSD. Boasting fast read/write speeds for an external drive, is this the SSD for those looking for a solution for those large files – or maybe just want to be able to swiftly game, regardless of the PC?
First the Specs:
- Color: Black/Titanium Gray
- Capacity: 256GB / 512GB / 1TB (Reviewed)
- Dimensions: 2 x 44 x 14mm / 4.8 x 1.73 x 0.55inch (L x W x H)
- Weight: 95 g / 3.35 oz
- Interface: USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C (backward compatible with USB 2.0)
- Operating system requirements: Windows 8 / 8.1 / 10 , Mac OS X 10.6 or later, Linux Kernel 2.6 or later, Android 5.0 or later
- Operating Temperature: 0°C (32°F) to 35°C (95°F)
- Voltage: DC 5V, 900mA
- Accessories: USB 3.2 Type-C to C cable, USB 3.2 Type-C to A cable, Quick Start Guide
- Speed: Read/Write up to 1000MB/s
- Warranty: Limited 3-year
- Price: $69.99 256GB /$89.99 512GB / $169.99 1TB Capacity on Amazon
First Look and Impressions
Upon opening the box, the ADATA SE760 SSD doesn’t look bad. It’s slim, rounded rectangular shape with brushed titanium gray look is industrial, yet refined. I also really appreciate the fact that while the USB C connector on the SSD itself is required, the team at ADATA don’t assume everyone has a USB 3.2 Type-C connection on their computer, and as such an extra cable with a traditional Type-A connector is included. While I do think the cables included could be a little longer, including both types is a really nice touch.
The drive is lightweight enough and slim enough that it really does not feel obtrusive in my laptop back or backpack as I’ve traveled around Las Vegas the last week or so with the drive. It’s not a rugged drive, so I’ve been a bit more careful with this in my travels than I would another drive, but its design also means it fits easily into my pocket, making it a little easier to carry around with me. It’s a vast improvement over the slim, but bulky by comparison WD external HDD I’ve been using, even if it skimps in the capacity department by comparison.
In fact, the drive looks so natural next to my ROG laptop, that it actually looks like a natural extension of the machine. It’s a nice aesthetic touch that obviously wasn’t planned, but it definitely blends in with the brushed gray on my laptop. However, looks are only part of this equation. The question is – how does it perform?
Benchmarks
For our testing, we used a combination of standard drive benchmark tools out there, including ATTA, AS SSD and CrystalDiskMark to determine the speeds and synthetics of the drive. In addition, we timed real-time transfer speeds moving large files from one speedy NVMe drive to the ADATA SE760 SSD.
In the above screenshot from CrystalDiskInfo, we see that the SE760 is indeed using its own NVMe Interface, the SX6000LNP drive. This helps to explain some of the claims of its read/write speeds up to 1000MB/s. Just how close does the drive come to those claims, though?
CrystalDiskMark measures the performance of a drive by reading and writing large amounts of data. The Read and Write speeds are definitely high, especially compared to my other external drives which topped out around the 127 MB/s mark. It’s a marked improvement over a standard external HDD, and while it’s not up there with many of the internal NVMe SSDs you can buy (my main drive on my laptop rates at 1800MB/s read and write by comparison) it’s definitely fast enough to keep me happy.
AS SSD benchmarks much the same way as CDM, but gives us another picture at how the drive performs in synthetic testing. Here you’ll note the speeds rated are slower than CDM’s results, with the drive still unable to top out at the rated 1GB/s read and write speeds.
The ATTO Benchmark gives us a more granular view, breaking the speeds out block by block. Here you’ll see that the drive peaks around the 512KB through 64MB range, with its read/write speeds holding around closer to the CDM testing.
In real world performance, we tested the transfer speeds of large files – both moving over a singular 1.2GB video file from one drive to the next, taking only about 2 seconds to do so. By comparison, moving that file to a standard external drive took about 10 times longer, sitting around 20 seconds on the P10 Western Digital drive. It shows the vast gulf in speeds between an SSD and a HDD.
This was further reflected in game loading times. With MMOs, loading times are not fully dependent on the speed of your drive, but also the time it takes to connect to the server of your game. However, games like Shogun 2: Total War and Divinity Original Sin 2 loaded quickly, with Divinity loading within 6 seconds into the main menu, and another 8 seconds into a saved game on the drive. During use as well the drive does heat up some, but it’s never hot to the touch – just a smidge warm when under load.
Conclusion
The ADATA SE760 External SSD is a sleek, fast drive. It’s small, compact and its industrial look fits right in with my brushed gray laptop. It’s not cheap, especially for those looking for a good external alternative without breaking the bank. Topping out at $169.99 for the 1TB capacity, the cost/per GB being about .17 cents isn’t too bad – and if you don’t think you’ll need all 1 TB, the cheaper varieties offer the ability to choose one in your range. Including a 3 year warranty as well helps make the purchase a little easier, knowing that if there is something wrong with the drive from a defect or manufacturing standpoint, you’re covered for quite a while.
The disappointing thing, though, is the Sequential writes, lagging well behind the rated 1000MB/s on the drive – though the seq. reads also lag behind the listed rating. However, in application, the transfer speeds never felt like they let me down, allowing me to transfer large video files from my laptop to main PC in a flash. Loading games felt faster than any other external drive I use, though I still feel if you have the expandable storage space in your PC, use a higher-rated NVMe there first. I found myself using the External SSD to house games I wanted to pick up on the go, as well as MMOs such as Final Fantasy XIV and The Elder Scrolls Online: Greymoor to bounce back and forth between my PC and laptop without needing two separate installs.
