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POWER CONSUMPTION
For our power consumption testing, we have the drive connected to the system as a secondary drive. In order to get a power reading from this M.2 form factor drive, we have connected to an M.2 to SATA adapter as well. To record the wattage, we use an Amprobe AM-270 multimeter connected in line with the 5v power on our SATA power cable to the drive. The multimeter records the min/max amperage draw from the drive over our testing period.
We also record the drive’s sequential and random read and write power draw using Anvil Storage Utilities. We then take the values recorded and calculate the wattage of the drive. Some of the results may seem high compared to a standard notebook HDD because as these are peak values under load. When we see average power draw, SSDs are still more power efficient because they only hit max power for a short period of time.
When it comes to power consumption, the SP900 M.2 performs decently. It is rated for a max of 6W active and 0.3W during idle. In our testing we found the drive stayed well within these boundaries. Idle consumption came in at a low 0.115W and the max consumption we seen was 3.8W. 4K read and write consumption is about average with what we have seen with other devices at 1.7W during 4K reads and 2.15W during 4K writes.
REPORT ANALYSIS AND FINAL THOUGHTS
Good things come in small packages and with the available M.2 2242 and 2280 form factors and capacities ranging from 128GB-512GB, these drives are great for Ultrabooks and desktop motherboards alike. You can grab one of these and quickly enable some SSD caching on your system or you can simply migrate the OS over for a faster experience if you are still stuck on a HDD. The inclusion of DevSleep support for lower power consumption is a must when developing SSDs for next gen portable devices and we are glad to see this drive comes with it.
With the combination of synchronous MLC flash and an SF-2281 controller, the ADATA Premier Pro SP900 M.2 has performed well throughout testing. It was able to achieve rated specs right off the bat with ATTO, reaching 557MB/s read and 532MB/s write. When moving on to other tests we could see the downfall of the SandForce controller is that it needs compressible data to reach rated write speeds.
Our testing with CDM, AS SSD, and Anvil showed that when testing with incompressible data the drive reached a high of around 270MB/s write, which is still decent performance. Moving on to PCMark we could see that in real world usage scenarios that the near 4 year old controller still provided competitive performance despite its age. And for power testing, idle draw is decent and overall consumption is on par with many other drives in the market.
The ADATA Premier pro SP900 has been available for a few months now and is a bit of a premium over its 2.5″ counterparts, however it is a good bit cheaper than a few of its competitors at this time. It offers up a bit less performance than some of the new drives out there, however it is almost inconceivable in real world usage and is definitely a better value overall for typical client usage if you are looking for an M.2 solution.
Due to this, we feel the ADATA Premier Pro SP900 M.2 deserves our Bronze Seal! If you are in the market for a new M.2 SATA SSD, be sure to give this one a good look.
Check Out the ADATA Premier Pro SP900 M.2 at Amazon Today
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Would be best if this article started off by clearly stating if this is PCI-e or mSATA M.2. This is a big issue with the M.2 form factor – lack of clarity.
There is no such things as mSATA M.2. I am going to guess you meant SATA however, which is exactly the same as 6Gbps which is listed right after M.2 in the title. I might suggest lack of understanding rather than lack of clarity. 6Gbps is understood as SATA 3 since thats what it has always been. Thanks for taking the time.
From Wiki: “M.2, formerly known as the Next Generation Form Factor (NGFF), is a specification for internally mounted computer expansion cards and associated connectors. It replaces the mSATA standard, which uses the PCI Express Mini Card physical layout. M.2’s more flexible physical specification that allows different module widths and lengths, together with more advanced features, makes the M.2 more suitable for solid-state storage applications in general, especially when used in small devices like ultrabooks or tablets”
Does the 2242 have the same performance as the 2280? A lot of ultrabooks now only can fit 2242 slots but there is not a lot of choices or good reviews of the few choices in that size.
It depends on the combination of controller, memory and even DRAM cache. As the 2242 can accommodate less physical memory pieces, this could play a role in the end performance of the SSD.
Well specifically I meant the 2242
ADATA Premier Pro SP900 M.2. I think the review could use a blurb at the end. Like this model also comes in 42mm but the performance is about xx % less than the 80mm we reviewed.
I was thinking of buying it but cannot find any comparisons between it and the mydigitalssd models. Or even separate performance benchmarks I could compare on my own. Seems to be a real gap in information with the new thinkpads and many other models only fitting 42mm m.2s
My reply didn’t state that there was a performance difference, but rather, there may be and the reasoning for such. We can only comment on what we test and, having not compared both, could not make such a comment on our report. Thanks for the concern and we will see what we can do about getting the other in for testing.