116 PCWorld FEBRUARY 2021HERE’S HOW YOU MAY NOT BE GETTING THE SSD YOU PAID FOR
Adata forthcoming in time for this article. But
to their infinite credit, several vendors were
more than willing to chime in, including
Silicon Power. The company admitted to
changing components, but promised that the
product would still meet performance claims.
Apacer said the same about its pro and
consumer lines, but said there would be no
component changes in the company’s
industrial line.
Fledging and OWC both said they alter
model numbers and SKUs to reflect any
changes. Sabrent and SK Hynix flat-out said
they retain the same components. Assuming
those company’s suppliers don’t fiddle
about, that’s ideal. Note that SK Hynix is its
own supplier, which makes it a lot easier.
Seagate said its products are
“designed to meet their stated
performance requirements.” Other larger
vendors were less willing to engage.
Responses varied from no-comment from
Samsung and Kingston, to no response at
all from WD/Sandisk. Crucial
acknowledged receipt of my email but had
not responded further by the time of this
writing.
We’ve reviewed products from all these
vendors and never experienced nor heard
about their SSDs’ failing to perform as
advertised. WD caught some flack recently
(go.pcworld.com/flak) over mislabeled
SMR HDDs, however, and Kingston is
mentioned in the Tom’s Hardware article as WD took some flack over mislabeled SMR HDDs.having had an issue well in the past.AS ALWAYS, CAVEAT
EMPTOR
Vendors: We understand you might need to
change components. All we’re asking is that
you slap a revision number on it and make
sure people can see it.
Users: If the drive you buy doesn’t seem
to measure up, it may be because of a
component change. And though it saddens
me to say it, treat the performance results you
find in our SSD reviews (go.pcworld.com/
rvsd) as a moment in time. We unfortunately
can’t guarantee that the drive you buy will be
exactly the same as the one we reviewed. We
hope it’s as-good or better.