56 PCWorld JUNE 2020REVIEWS ADATA SE800 PORTABLE SSD
T5 (go.pcworld.com/sgt5) and T7 (go.
pcworld.com/sgt7), SanDisk’s Extreme Pro
Portable (go.pcworld.com/snxp), Crucial’s
X8 (go.pcworld.com/crx8), etc., is
significantly larger. All will lay lightly in the
palm of your hand or ride easily in a shirt
pocket.
The SE800 ships in either black or a rich
blue, however, its most salient physical feature
is a captive plastic end-cap that pops off toreveal the Type-C USB port. That cover (which
protects the port while in transit) is why it is
IP68 (go.pcworld.com/ip68) rated against
the elements. Without it, the drive would
likely not survive the 1.5-meter, 30-minute
submersion test that rating requires.
Note that the SE800 is USB 3.2 Gen 2
(also known as Super Speed USB 10Gbps),
not the dual-channel 20Gbps Gen 2x2 (also
known as Super Speed USB 10Gbps) that’s
the salient feature of the USB 3.2 spec.
Confused by USB versions (go.pcworld.com/
cnfs)? You’re not alone. It’s most confusing,
frustrating, and space-wasting naming
convention in the history of computing.
The SE800 is available in two flavors:
512GB (currently $90 from Amazon.com [go.
pcworld.com/a512]), and the 1TB capacity
we tested (currently $150 from Amazon.com
[go.pcworld.com/a1tb]). The drive is
warrantied for three years. Adata didn’t
provide a TBW (TerraBytes Written) rating, but
neither do other ultraportable SSD vendors
for some reason. The company did let us
know that the NVMe bridge chip/controller is
from Innogrit, and the NAND is 96-layer
stacked/layered/3D.PERFORMANCE
The SE800 couldn’t match SanDisk’s Extreme
Portable Pro in terms of overall performance,
but it’s no slouch either reading or writing
data. None of the latest NVMe-based ultra
portable SSDs are. Even the PNY Pro Elite (go.The Adata SE 800 Portable SSD is available in
black or this rich blue.