I don’t think you are being critical enough of this drive. It is appallingly bad. It’s basically outclassed by SATA drives from years ago in almost every metric except sequential performance (where NVMe will naturally excel)
But real world performance is terrible, power usage is high (and it has broken devsleep) and it isn’t very cheap. When you consider reliability is a total u known I’m struggling to imagine a single person who would consider this.
The MX500 beats the SX6000 Pro on just ONE of those performance metrics. The picture's not that different if you compare against a Samsung SATA drive. Overall performance is clearly much better than a SATA SSD. It's not appallingly bad. It just isn't a high-end NVMe drive.
Based Billy Tallis *dabbing* on the n00bs in the comments section. FACTS don't care about your feelings, Samus. It's times like this I'm glad you can't edit your comments, since moments like these are eternalized forever.
To be fair, the Samsung 850 Pro does beat it in the sustained random read/writes, power efficiency of said read/writes and uses a lot less power while active idle.
To be fairer, the Samsung is at least five years old, costs three times as much if you can get it, and has an idle response that is 15X worse than the ADATA. The ADATA is clearly the better drive for 99% of the population.
It's absolutely appallingly bad. You can't simply excuse broken power management with "the other vendors messed it up too", the point is that none of those other vendors have messed it up NOW. Realtek failed to learn from and avoid their competitors' mistake, and by doing so have introduced their controller with a handicap versus the same competitors. It's also both unproven, slower, and more expensive than older controllers that do have a known track record, so that's four strikes against the RTS5763DL.
In contrast, drives using the two-year-old SM2263XT are faster, cheaper, and to be blunt, just better. There is thus no reason why anybody would ever choose a drive using RTS5763DL, and its complete failure to compete is only going to become more apparent once the next-gen SMI and Phison controllers arrive (and E12 products go EOL and get huge discounts).
In short, while not as bad as Realtek's attempt at a SATA SSD controller, the RTS5763DL is just a plain bad product that simply cannot be recommended in any way shape or form.
Well look at this one again then: https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph15139/sus... I've learned from real-life usage that this test is one of the most important metrics that you will notice in your day to day usage. The Realtek is by far the fastest cacheless NVMe controller out there in this test. Also while the drive lacks DEVSLP, statements like "broken power management" are just false. The graphs clearly show that it cuts power in half in each state. Lacking DEVSLP does not equal broken power management. ADATA even clearly states this on their website.
well... I installed the xpg Gammix s41 which is based in the same microcontroller! I lost more than an hour of battery life in my laptop and now sleep mode is basically useless. One big mistake in my part was caring only about read and write speeds. I can't wait to replace this drive, its driving me mad!
The HP EX950 1TB has been my favorite value/$ drive for a while, and it costs a whole $7 more than the SX6000 Pro. It whomps the XPG drive in almost every test, and in many tests it is more than twice as fast.
In what possible scenario would the XPG drive be a smarter purchase than the HP? None that I can see. This review is way too forgiving.
My mindset is that your complaint isn't specific to the SX6000P; it's true of the entire category of "low-end NVMe" drives, so I don't want to single out the SX6000P for suffering from the same problem that all of its closest competitors also suffer from. It's halfway-decent at what it's trying to be, but it's trying to compete in a niche that barely exists in the first place.
At least for the retail SSD market. The most popular retail NVMe SSDs are all high-end drives, so they get economies of scale that the low-end models don't, and that's why E12 and SM2262 drives can be priced so close to low-end NVMe. But in the OEM market, low-end NVMe drives do have a more compelling value proposition, and that's where the controller vendors make the real money.
That in turn influences what kind of drive designs the SSD vendors have on hand to readily convert into a retail product. The best example of this is the WD Blue SN500/SN550 series, which existed as an OEM product for a year before it came to retail. There's also Toshiba's BG series, which has been through four generations and they only bothered to do a retail release of one of them.
The SSD market is and has been monstrously compressed.
The difference between performance tiers for SATA is frequently $10/tier. (excepting the occasional Samsung drive.)
I don't see that anything is substantially different for NVMe. This is a good, maybe great, budget drive. The problem being that you can spend $10 for a far better one.
At some point in the future where price isn't entirely dictated by Flash BoM this might change, but for now it only makes sense to get the best drive in a category since they all cost about the same.
My thoughts also... I was looking at NVMe Gen4x4 drives at around $200 for 1TB, but then saw the EVO 970 Plus was out performing them, almost bought that on Monday for $199, but saw a Sabrient Gen4 for $168 with $11 coupon on Amazon and went with that... NOW Amazon has the EVO 970 Plus for $169... which ever way the wind blows is the best value it seems. Although, Amazon has those "morphing" prices that seem to change often, probably based on your search habits. $169 for the EVO 970 Plus 1TB vs. $539 for the 2TB? Maybe Amazon tells vendors where the majority of sales volume is coming (ie 1TB) and competitors are getting more sales through via a certain price and miraculously the Samsung EVO price drops to match in a few days!! I'm sure Amazon analytics provided to their vendors play a part, probably be back to $239 after Xmas.
The pricing is what makes all of this somewhat nuts. When I rebuilt my machine a month or so ago I ended up going with the 660p because I could get the 2TB version for around $170.
While it isn't near the top of the heap for the destroyer, I don't do transfers of much more than a few GB at a time, and those are limited more by my Internet connection than by the drive.
I've also got a professional grade SATA SSD, and despite its synthetic benchmarks being an order of magnitude lower than the 660p, I honestly can't tell a difference between what's installed on which. And I'm a heavy gamer who runs stuff that is notorious for slow load times and heavy RAM usuage. Even there, I'm not usually pulling more that 20Gb of data in a set, so it's just not a big difference.
I gotta disagree with the P1. I have one (1TB), and to be honest, I hate it. It's just...garbage in every way. I actually HAD an SX6000 Pro 1TB (unfortunately forgot to swap it out before I sold the laptop it was in) and it was so much better than the P1 they weren't even in the same zip code.
IMO low end NVMe drives aren't worth considering at all. If you dont have the money for a Samsung Evo then dont both because you aren't really seeing the benefits. Obviously this doesn't apply in the case of a laptop or SFF where you may not have a choice.
It would be nice is low end NVMe drives were significantly cheaper but at least right now they are not. I don't really see the rationale for paying 2% less and getting 40% lower performance.
I upgraded from a 256GB SATA Samsung 840 Pro (my first SSD ever) to the HP EX 920 1TB and love it. Never thought I'd end up going with a HP SSD but their EX 9x0 product line is great. Thinking of getting another NVME drive just for games and going with the EX 950.
Well, there's this scenario where in some region in the world, HP ssd is simply nonexistent in market, and when they do, the price is wayy higher compared to original price. So... ?
So basically if you just want more ssd storage that is more cost effective then go for one of these dram less drives. If you care about performance and don't mind a bit of a extra cost then pick up a drive with a decent dram cache.
My own personal wants/needs require a drive with a DRAM cache and any of these drives with the realtek chipset and any other one with no dram cache support is a huge no go for me.
Some reviewers have speculated that these newer Realtek controllers are using MLC rather than SLC mode. Your results to some degree support this conjecture. I personally did not expect to see that on a TLC drive, but what are your thoughts on the subject?
I'd like to add that I'm not supporting that viewpoint - full-drive SLC is in-line with ADATA's design principles on drives like this and the SU750 - but I'm curious about your take on those other reviews.
The official spec sheet from ADATA says SLC caching, but I doubt those are actually written by people who would know better if it was MLC caching. The MLC caching hypothesis definitely explains why the cache is slower than usual for an SLC cache, and probably also why the folding process seems to be so slow. I'm not sure if it explains why the full-drive ATSB runs do comparatively well, and I'm still puzzled about the apparent lack of effect from HMB.
If your laptop has about 40Wh battery and its battery lasts 8 hours with an optimal drive, with this drive it would last about 15 minutes less. Hardly end of the world and most people wouldn't notice the difference.
Having a quick view on amazon, its $120 here in ol US of A for the 1tb version. The Sabrent 1tb is also $120 and is one of a bunch of reference Phison E12 / Toshiba TLC designs. This is considered a top tier NVME SSD that can trade blows with the latest Samsung Evo.
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36 Comments
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Samus - Wednesday, December 18, 2019 - link
I don’t think you are being critical enough of this drive. It is appallingly bad. It’s basically outclassed by SATA drives from years ago in almost every metric except sequential performance (where NVMe will naturally excel)But real world performance is terrible, power usage is high (and it has broken devsleep) and it isn’t very cheap. When you consider reliability is a total u known I’m struggling to imagine a single person who would consider this.
Billy Tallis - Wednesday, December 18, 2019 - link
Let me make it a bit clearer for you: https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/2533?vs=22...The MX500 beats the SX6000 Pro on just ONE of those performance metrics. The picture's not that different if you compare against a Samsung SATA drive. Overall performance is clearly much better than a SATA SSD. It's not appallingly bad. It just isn't a high-end NVMe drive.
DPUser - Wednesday, December 18, 2019 - link
Appallingly Clearer. : )Alistair - Wednesday, December 18, 2019 - link
haha nice :)JoeyJoJo123 - Wednesday, December 18, 2019 - link
Based Billy Tallis *dabbing* on the n00bs in the comments section. FACTS don't care about your feelings, Samus. It's times like this I'm glad you can't edit your comments, since moments like these are eternalized forever.MFinn3333 - Wednesday, December 18, 2019 - link
To be fair, the Samsung 850 Pro does beat it in the sustained random read/writes, power efficiency of said read/writes and uses a lot less power while active idle.https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/2310?vs=25...
(Blue is Samsung and Orange is ADATA because Samsung is blue in my mind).
To be fairer, the Samsung is at least five years old, costs three times as much if you can get it, and has an idle response that is 15X worse than the ADATA. The ADATA is clearly the better drive for 99% of the population.
The_Assimilator - Wednesday, December 18, 2019 - link
It's absolutely appallingly bad. You can't simply excuse broken power management with "the other vendors messed it up too", the point is that none of those other vendors have messed it up NOW. Realtek failed to learn from and avoid their competitors' mistake, and by doing so have introduced their controller with a handicap versus the same competitors. It's also both unproven, slower, and more expensive than older controllers that do have a known track record, so that's four strikes against the RTS5763DL.In contrast, drives using the two-year-old SM2263XT are faster, cheaper, and to be blunt, just better. There is thus no reason why anybody would ever choose a drive using RTS5763DL, and its complete failure to compete is only going to become more apparent once the next-gen SMI and Phison controllers arrive (and E12 products go EOL and get huge discounts).
In short, while not as bad as Realtek's attempt at a SATA SSD controller, the RTS5763DL is just a plain bad product that simply cannot be recommended in any way shape or form.
milli - Wednesday, December 18, 2019 - link
Well look at this one again then: https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph15139/sus...I've learned from real-life usage that this test is one of the most important metrics that you will notice in your day to day usage. The Realtek is by far the fastest cacheless NVMe controller out there in this test.
Also while the drive lacks DEVSLP, statements like "broken power management" are just false. The graphs clearly show that it cuts power in half in each state. Lacking DEVSLP does not equal broken power management. ADATA even clearly states this on their website.
gregassagraf - Wednesday, July 21, 2021 - link
well... I installed the xpg Gammix s41 which is based in the same microcontroller! I lost more than an hour of battery life in my laptop and now sleep mode is basically useless. One big mistake in my part was caring only about read and write speeds. I can't wait to replace this drive, its driving me mad!mark625 - Wednesday, December 18, 2019 - link
The HP EX950 1TB has been my favorite value/$ drive for a while, and it costs a whole $7 more than the SX6000 Pro. It whomps the XPG drive in almost every test, and in many tests it is more than twice as fast.In what possible scenario would the XPG drive be a smarter purchase than the HP? None that I can see. This review is way too forgiving.
Billy Tallis - Wednesday, December 18, 2019 - link
My mindset is that your complaint isn't specific to the SX6000P; it's true of the entire category of "low-end NVMe" drives, so I don't want to single out the SX6000P for suffering from the same problem that all of its closest competitors also suffer from. It's halfway-decent at what it's trying to be, but it's trying to compete in a niche that barely exists in the first place.At least for the retail SSD market. The most popular retail NVMe SSDs are all high-end drives, so they get economies of scale that the low-end models don't, and that's why E12 and SM2262 drives can be priced so close to low-end NVMe. But in the OEM market, low-end NVMe drives do have a more compelling value proposition, and that's where the controller vendors make the real money.
That in turn influences what kind of drive designs the SSD vendors have on hand to readily convert into a retail product. The best example of this is the WD Blue SN500/SN550 series, which existed as an OEM product for a year before it came to retail. There's also Toshiba's BG series, which has been through four generations and they only bothered to do a retail release of one of them.
Great_Scott - Wednesday, December 18, 2019 - link
The SSD market is and has been monstrously compressed.The difference between performance tiers for SATA is frequently $10/tier. (excepting the occasional Samsung drive.)
I don't see that anything is substantially different for NVMe. This is a good, maybe great, budget drive. The problem being that you can spend $10 for a far better one.
At some point in the future where price isn't entirely dictated by Flash BoM this might change, but for now it only makes sense to get the best drive in a category since they all cost about the same.
Freeb!rd - Thursday, December 19, 2019 - link
My thoughts also... I was looking at NVMe Gen4x4 drives at around $200 for 1TB, but then saw the EVO 970 Plus was out performing them, almost bought that on Monday for $199, but saw a Sabrient Gen4 for $168 with $11 coupon on Amazon and went with that... NOW Amazon has the EVO 970 Plus for $169... which ever way the wind blows is the best value it seems. Although, Amazon has those "morphing" prices that seem to change often, probably based on your search habits. $169 for the EVO 970 Plus 1TB vs. $539 for the 2TB? Maybe Amazon tells vendors where the majority of sales volume is coming (ie 1TB) and competitors are getting more sales through via a certain price and miraculously the Samsung EVO price drops to match in a few days!! I'm sure Amazon analytics provided to their vendors play a part, probably be back to $239 after Xmas.Freeb!rd - Thursday, December 19, 2019 - link
FYI, so the Sabrient Gen4 was $157.xx after coupon, still a great deal on a Gen4x4 drive for my new X570 motherboard.HarryVoyager - Thursday, December 19, 2019 - link
The pricing is what makes all of this somewhat nuts. When I rebuilt my machine a month or so ago I ended up going with the 660p because I could get the 2TB version for around $170.While it isn't near the top of the heap for the destroyer, I don't do transfers of much more than a few GB at a time, and those are limited more by my Internet connection than by the drive.
I've also got a professional grade SATA SSD, and despite its synthetic benchmarks being an order of magnitude lower than the 660p, I honestly can't tell a difference between what's installed on which. And I'm a heavy gamer who runs stuff that is notorious for slow load times and heavy RAM usuage. Even there, I'm not usually pulling more that 20Gb of data in a set, so it's just not a big difference.
dragosmp - Thursday, December 19, 2019 - link
QLC was supposed to help with this segmentation. Hard to make a low end drive much cheaper just by not adding a 2$ DRAM chip and some PCB traces.Crucial P1 tends to kinda fulfill the QLC promise. It is sometimes at or around 80$ on offer for 1TB, has good warranty and performs quite well:
https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/2533?vs=22...
tlmiller76 - Saturday, December 21, 2019 - link
I gotta disagree with the P1. I have one (1TB), and to be honest, I hate it. It's just...garbage in every way. I actually HAD an SX6000 Pro 1TB (unfortunately forgot to swap it out before I sold the laptop it was in) and it was so much better than the P1 they weren't even in the same zip code.zmatt - Saturday, December 21, 2019 - link
IMO low end NVMe drives aren't worth considering at all. If you dont have the money for a Samsung Evo then dont both because you aren't really seeing the benefits. Obviously this doesn't apply in the case of a laptop or SFF where you may not have a choice.TheUnhandledException - Wednesday, December 18, 2019 - link
It would be nice is low end NVMe drives were significantly cheaper but at least right now they are not. I don't really see the rationale for paying 2% less and getting 40% lower performance.sean8102 - Monday, February 3, 2020 - link
I upgraded from a 256GB SATA Samsung 840 Pro (my first SSD ever) to the HP EX 920 1TB and love it. Never thought I'd end up going with a HP SSD but their EX 9x0 product line is great. Thinking of getting another NVME drive just for games and going with the EX 950.otonieru - Sunday, May 10, 2020 - link
Well, there's this scenario where in some region in the world, HP ssd is simply nonexistent in market, and when they do, the price is wayy higher compared to original price. So... ?rocky12345 - Wednesday, December 18, 2019 - link
So basically if you just want more ssd storage that is more cost effective then go for one of these dram less drives. If you care about performance and don't mind a bit of a extra cost then pick up a drive with a decent dram cache.My own personal wants/needs require a drive with a DRAM cache and any of these drives with the realtek chipset and any other one with no dram cache support is a huge no go for me.
NewMaxx - Wednesday, December 18, 2019 - link
Thank you for the review.Some reviewers have speculated that these newer Realtek controllers are using MLC rather than SLC mode. Your results to some degree support this conjecture. I personally did not expect to see that on a TLC drive, but what are your thoughts on the subject?
NewMaxx - Wednesday, December 18, 2019 - link
I'd like to add that I'm not supporting that viewpoint - full-drive SLC is in-line with ADATA's design principles on drives like this and the SU750 - but I'm curious about your take on those other reviews.Billy Tallis - Thursday, December 19, 2019 - link
The official spec sheet from ADATA says SLC caching, but I doubt those are actually written by people who would know better if it was MLC caching. The MLC caching hypothesis definitely explains why the cache is slower than usual for an SLC cache, and probably also why the folding process seems to be so slow. I'm not sure if it explains why the full-drive ATSB runs do comparatively well, and I'm still puzzled about the apparent lack of effect from HMB.NewMaxx - Friday, December 20, 2019 - link
Thank you for the reply. It'll be interesting to compare this to the RTS5762 drives.TheWereCat - Thursday, December 19, 2019 - link
It's only 10€ cheaper than SX8200 Pro where I live.127€ vs 137€ for 1TB.
LMonty - Thursday, December 19, 2019 - link
Good thing I saw this review before buying one for my laptop! Battery life would have been impacted.The_Assimilator - Thursday, December 19, 2019 - link
Simple maxim in the PC space: if you see "Realtek", avoid.crimson117 - Thursday, December 19, 2019 - link
Good luck buying a motherboard.tlmiller76 - Saturday, December 21, 2019 - link
Can't say I've ever heard that, but it's definitely true.zepi - Thursday, December 19, 2019 - link
If your laptop has about 40Wh battery and its battery lasts 8 hours with an optimal drive, with this drive it would last about 15 minutes less. Hardly end of the world and most people wouldn't notice the difference.LMonty - Thursday, December 19, 2019 - link
It does have a 40Wh battery but lasts 6 hrs for my use case. It currently has a 275GB Crucial MX300 SSD.TrevorH - Thursday, December 19, 2019 - link
Two words that aren't usually seen together. Pro. Realtek.urbanman2004 - Friday, December 20, 2019 - link
I think I'll be better off using my SATA drives. No thanksScipio Africanus - Friday, December 20, 2019 - link
Having a quick view on amazon, its $120 here in ol US of A for the 1tb version. The Sabrent 1tb is also $120 and is one of a bunch of reference Phison E12 / Toshiba TLC designs. This is considered a top tier NVME SSD that can trade blows with the latest Samsung Evo.Nope.. that's a huge NO