Final Thoughts
When it comes to both drives they performed right up to their specifications, which is always good to see. The Swordfish is definitely more of an entry-level drive with read and write speeds of 1800 MB/s and 1200 MB/s respectively, while the Falcon is much faster with speeds of 3100 MB/s read and 1500 MB/s write. These speeds are still not the fastest in terms of PCI-Express 3.0 x4 M.2 drives, but they are considerably faster than traditional hard drives and even SATA-based solid state drives.
I also like that ADATA put a heatspreader on each of these drives. Many mid-range motherboards so not come with integrated heatsinks / heatspreaders so it is nice you get them with these drives so they will look quite good installed in your system. ADATA backs both of the drives with a 5-year warranty and they are available in capacities all the way up to 2TB.
When it comes to storage at the end of the day it really comes down to price. Right now the ADATA Swordfish (1TB) is selling at our favorite online retailer $94.99 and the Falcon is $104.99. These prices are pretty good, although I would have liked to have seen the Swordfish a little lower.
At the end of the day both of these drives would be a great choice and you can’t argue with the 5-year warranty, which you typically don’t find on entry-level drives.
Pros:
– Both perform up to specifications
– Integrated heatspreaders
– 5-year warranty
– Decent sustained write performance
– Price
Cons:
– Not the fastest Gen3 NVMe drives out there
