Adata Ultimate SU900 256GB
An affordable SATA SSD offering solid performance, decent software support and some handy accessories
It’s hard for a SATA SSD to distinguish itself. The SATA interface itself acts as a bottleneck on bandwidth, so no matter how fast and flashy the technology inside your drive, it’s simply impossible for a drive to race ahead of its rivals.
That’s not to say that all drives are identical. The Adata Ultimate SU900 was this month’s fastest SATA drive in our sequential read benchmark. However, look at the collated results on p90 and it’s clear that we’re dealing with small margins. For most practical purposes, the SU900 delivers the same overall performance as any other drive in its class.
That being the case, you might wonder what makes it a winner compared to, say, the Corsair Force LE. One factor is the price: if 256GB of solid-state storage is enough for you then the SU900 is a very affordable way to get it. (Oddly, the 512GB model works out slightly more expensive on a per-gigabyte basis – the best online price we’ve seen is £158.)
Then there’s the software. Registering your drive entitles you to download a copy of Acronis True Image HD 2015, to help move your operating system and personal files onto your shiny new SSD. To be clear, this isn’t the full Acronis backup suite – it’s a much simpler tool that’s designed for the single job of moving Windows from an old disk to a new one. Nevertheless, it takes some of the stress out of upgrading.
The box also includes a 2.5mm spacer – helpful if you’re replacing a laptop drive – and, uniquely among this month’s drives, a 3.5in bracket, so you can easily slot the SU900 into a desktop chassis.
The only thing missing is hardware encryption; you can of course use third-party disk-encryption software with any SSD, but this runs on your CPU rather than the hardware controller, meaning it’s a slightly less elegant solution. If that’s a deal- breaker for you, consider the Crucial MX300 instead.
It’s perhaps a bit cheeky of Adata to describe the U900 as an “Ultimate” SSD – that implies that there’s something exceptional about it, which really there isn’t. However, a fair price and decent software bundle, as well as some thoughtful in-box accessories, make this an SSD we’re happy to recommend.