- If you buy electronics
on marketplaces like eBay or Ali Express, you can
easily end up with a product that doesn't live up to
the performance or quality that you would expect. But what if I told you that the same thing is happening right now
on reputable websites, like Newegg and Micro Center, and with trusted brands like
Kingston, PNY and Adata. That's right. All three of them have been accused of releasing new products, then silently downgrading
them after the fact. It's the perfect crime, right? You get a wave of positive reviews from media and early
enthusiast customers, right? And for everyone who comes later, well, they have no way of getting the original
product to compare. So you can just hand wave it
away as your mileage may vary. Right? Wrong. In March of this year, I put out a bounty for a particular drive,
the Adata XPG SX8200 Pro, offering to pay our community
members three times the MSRP if anyone could ship me a
unique variant of this drive. I mean, how many could there be, right? Two, three, eight? Wow. That's a lot. And we've got five of them to answer three questions
once and for all. Our manufacturers, bait and
switching their customers, why would they do that? And does it really matter anyway? Oh yeah. There's one more question. Who's our sponsor? Honey. Honey is the free to use
shopping tool that helps search for some of the best promo codes on lots of your favorite websites. Get it today@jointhoney.com/ltt. (low-pitched music) (upbeat electrifying music) On paper, the XPG SX8200 Pro is one of the top performing PCI
express GEN3M.2 drives. It's rated at up to 3500
megabytes per second reads and up to 3000 megabytes
per second writes. And in third-party
reviews, it managed to meet and sometimes even exceed
those lofty claims, whether sequential speeds
are a meaningful measure of SSD performance is
a separate discussion, but Adata used it as the
standard to measure this product and they delivered on it,
except for one small problem. If you go to the store today and pull an SX8200 Pro off the shelf, you might not actually
be getting one of these. It ended up being a Reddit user
by the name of Svarchimpans, who blew the whistle on this. They purchased three 88
SX8200 Pro two terabyte drives at different points in time and found that a brand new
drive purchased in 2021 was performing a boat as
well as a 94% full drive that had been in use for over a year. Big yikes, as the kids say. Of course, just because
something was on Reddit, doesn't make it accurate. And in fact, Adata pointed out that the user appeared
to have connected one of the SSDs directly to
CPU controlled PCIE lanes while the other was running
through the motherboards PCH. That actually could account for the observed performance difference, but I'm not fully satisfied. Let's go through all of
our different variants then and get them naked, starting with what
Adata sent to the media. There we go. Now there are three
main hardware components that affect SSD performance,
starting with the controller. This acts as both the brain
and communications hub of the drive and better ones
use smarter storage algorithms that have a profound impact on both performance and endurance. Next, we've got the NAND flash, where all your data is actually stored. Fast high endurance NAND means
a fast high endurance drive. And then finally, we've
got our DRAM cache. This holds data temporarily
so that it can be written in a way that, okay,
this is becoming a bit of a pattern here, makes the drive faster and longer lasting. And this right here, this
is a good combination. Silicon motion SM 2262 ENG controller, 4x256 gigs of IMFT 64
layer TLC NAND flash. It's a total of one terabyte, and two packages of 512
megabytes of Nanya DDR3L. Hold on a second. Given that speed and endurance are the only things really
separating a premium SSD from a cheap one, it stands to reason that changing even one of these
components has the potential to turn this into an entirely
different class of product. So, what did Adata change? I'm so glad you asked? Everything. Thanks to a tool developed specifically for Silicon motion controllers, we were able to generate this table with the full actual specs
of each of our five drives and to summarize what's
happening here compared to our original. Remember the one sent to the media, not a single drive had more than one of these three components I just talked about that matches. Only this one purchased in July of 2019, even uses the same ENG
variant of the controller with the other three using
the slower G variant. None of our samples used the
same DDR3 as our original, although I don't really
expect that to be a problem. And all five of them use not
just different NAND flash, but different NAND flash from
completely different vendors. That's right. Out of the top six NAND flash
manufacturers in the world, we have five of them represented here, which doesn't matter as long
as they all meet the same bar for performance and endurance. But the question is, do they? Unfortunately, without
hundreds of samples, we can't perform any kind of
meaningful endurance testing, but we can validate performance. And let's just say some
discrepancies were found. Right out of the gate, the three drives using
the slower G variant of the controller failed
to meet the up two sequential read and write
speeds advertised on the box while both of our EN variant samples at least came very close
in CrystalDiskMark. But let's see if these
differences hold up in PCMark, which is a benchmark that more closely simulates
real-world drive use. Now, this is interesting. Much like in the synthetic benchmark, the faster clocked EN variants
managed higher peak speeds for both reads and writes, but their overall performance
was actually measurably lower. And when we rerun the tests
with all of the drives, three quarters filled with data, the EN variants took a more
noticeable performance hit between seven and a half to 9%. That's compared to less
than 1% on the G drives. So in the case of the controller swap, you're likely to end up
with better performance in the real world, but
that doesn't explain 88 as loot box approach to
NAND flash procurement. Now, this one is more likely down to pricing and market availability. The SX 82 pro launched
right around the time that 96 layer flash was making
its way onto the market. There's an RND cost associated
with these transitions, but adding more layers generally lowers the cost per gigabyte, incentivizing this kind of development, except that NAND pricing is subject to supply and demand
pressure like any commodity. So if apple, let's say booked a huge order for 96 layer NAND tightening the supply, that could drive up the
price forcing smaller players like Adata to buy older 64 layer tech or whatever's available,
all of which can be fine, just like you'll look fine
in that stealth hoodie from lltstore.com. The thing is sourcing components from two or more suppliers
isn't a new strategy, and sometimes it's a necessary one. Samsung uses both Snapdragon
and Exynoses on flagship phones and Apple was sourcing modems from both Intel and
Qualcomm simultaneously at one point while they
made the transition. This practice can alleviate
supply chain issues and it can force your vendors
to stay cost competitive if they know you can just
buy it from someone else. AMD famously pulled a bait and switch with one of their products, the Ryzen 5 1600 a couple of years ago. But in that case, what they
did was quietly moved it from 14 nanometer to 12 nanometers, giving their customers a
slightly better version of what is fundamentally the
same product at a great price, no harm, no foul. It's just that the two rules to follow are that proper validation is needed to ensure that both parts are
indistinguishable to the end-user and failing that the
changes must be disclosed. Adata doesn't appear to have
done either of those things. In their statement to Tom's hardware, they said, "We do guarantee
that every SX8200 Pro will perform to spec within
the regular variations since the drives have
been tested stringently." But while that may be technically correct, anything between zero and
3500 megabytes per second is technically up to 3500
megabytes per second. It also has the potential
to be extremely misleading. There was a similar scandal back in 2014 when Kingston and PNY were called out for the same bait and switch tactic. Actually, as we were
finishing writing this video, new surface that PNY had allegedly quietly reduced the accelerate CS3030's endurance by nearly 80% on their
500 gig one terabyte and two terabyte models yet
there was no revision number or announcement and it's still labeled on shelves as the same drive. That means that customers are
left without the proper tools to make an informed decision. Now these vendors might say, who cares about a 10%
performance difference, or it's not our fault. It's down to the inconsistent supply and it's unmanageable to make a new skill every
time there's a change. But my counter to that is A, people pay a lot of money
for 10% more performance in some cases. And B, if you can't be
arsed to test and label and get the specs right
for your own products, maybe you need some oversight. I mean, this is why
organizations like Vesa exist. Prior to Vesa's display
HDR certification program, HDR ready was casually thrown
around without any regard for the level of experience that product would actually deliver. Now, the current system
ain't perfect either. I mean, display HDR 400
shouldn't even exist, but at least that label means that you can trust that product to meet a certain performance standard. Camera storage labels, like U3 and V 90 on SD cards
serve a similar purpose. They give consumers a quick and easy way to ensure that their media will handle the speeds
their camera requires. Now, this hasn't really been an issue with SSD boot drives up until now because the main competition
for them has been from hard drives, but as
genuinely faster SSDs become a requirement for gamers
who wanna take advantage of features like direct storage, it would be really nice to see someone hold these
guys accountable finally for playing so fast and loose
with their product specs. Oh, wait, I guess that's us. SSD manufacturers, stop it. We see you, all of us. You see that view counter down there, everyone knows about this now and if you guys don't cut it out, we're gonna be stuck telling
everyone to just stick to vendors like Samsung, who
are vertically integrated and don't randomly change suppliers for literally every core
component of their product. Just like we tell everyone to stick to buying technology and
computer hardware at Micro Center Micro Center has 25 locations
across the United States and you can check out Micro
Center's custom PC builder to spec out the best PC for your budget. They'll help you ensure all
your parts are compatible, find stock available at your
nearest micro center location, and once you add it to your cart, you can arrange same day in store pickup. For a fee you can check the box
marked same day pro assembly and Micro Center's expert technicians will assemble your PC for you. If you want help deciding what parts to put in your new custom gaming PC, join the online Micro Center community. It's a great place to discuss
tech with other enthusiasts. So don't wait, check out the
link in the video description to learn more about Micro Center and get a free pair of
wireless Bluetooth headphones, valid in store only,
no purchase necessary. If you guys enjoyed this video, maybe check out the
"Linus was right" video. It's not what it sounds like. It's the other line is, we're talking about ECC memory offer. (man laughing)
[removed]
If this makes you mad, go also check out his video on manufacturers swapping out RAM in gaming laptops after reviews. Same amount of RAM, but up to 20% performance hit because of the parts change. And zero transparency to the consumer. You literally need to open it up and eyeball it after you get the laptop to see if you got screwed or not.
On mobile so here's the link
https://youtu.be/R7CO9v9rpOk
Guess which brand is featured in google ads above the progress bar? Kingston!
What a poor decision to make. Glad I leant towards Samsung drives.
This definitely is already illegal. Nothing will happen until a lawyer thinks he can make a buck off it though.
This is common among manufacturers (IMO its unethical).
I remember I bought a really nice Moen kitchen sink tap as part of a reno. All stainless steel components very happy with it. Then less than a year later I moved and reno'd the new house, bought the same tap for the same price. They had changed all the stainless for plastic, it went from an expensive, high quality tap. To cheap plastic junk with only enough metal to qualify as lipstick on that pig.
They call it "Value Engineering" to me its just another version of shrinkflation.
This happened to me with Adata. will never buy them again. Almost lost one of my clients due to Adata's reduced performance. Built 5 High performance PCs for him. the newer ones were visibly crippled and seemed slower. the client called me out saying I sold him inferior hardware compared to the first 2 PCs. we checked and yes, even though it was the same parts the newer SSDs were slower and the performance was inferior. I had to take a hit to not lose the client. cost me almost 600 dollars out of my pocket. Now I know I won't buy PNY and Kingston either.
So what should I buy instead vs Kingston? Who is reliable and good?
i like kingston, was going to buy one of their nvme's to upgrade my new laptop. now i think i may just go samsung, bit more money but at least i know its all their components