Unlike fashionable and fast drives of the XPG series, for the Ultimate line, the Taiwanese manufacturer A-Data, on the contrary, selects the simplest and most unpretentious solid-state drives released in 2.5 and M.2 formats. Their main charm lies in affordable prices and a wealth of choice. At the time of this writing (note: end of 2021), along with Silicon Power Slim and Kingston A400, these are actually the most affordable drives on the market.


Most models in the Ultimate series are classic 2.5 format drives based on the popular 3D TLC NAND memory. Almost all are based on simple but well-proven memory controllers manufactured by Silicon Motion. According to the passport, Ultimate drives provide data transfer speeds up to 560 MB / s, and then everything is limited by the capabilities of the SATA bus. At the same time, IOPS indicators, which indicate the speed of writing small-block files, here depend on the specific model and its volume. The older it is and the larger it is, the faster the drive works with data archives.

For those users who are not satisfied with such features, A-Data periodically releases non-formatted M.2 portable SSDs, which are usually intended for laptops and portable PCs. Their unusual approach lies in their approach - if most of these drives fly at high speeds and operate using the NVMe protocol, A-Data Ultimate SU650 and Ultimate SU800 caliber solid state drives belong exclusively to the entry-level class, rely on the strength of entry-level memory controllers and give out the same speeds during linear read / write, as low-cost drives connected via the SATA bus.