New SSD from Apacer is Fastest in Its Maker's Collection

The SandForce controllers have been practically dominating the high-end SSD market since their creation, and Apacer has just unveiled its latest collection of SSDs based on them.

Since solid state drives, compared to hard disk drives, are much better in terms of performance, it makes sense that makers of such devices would push this aspect as far as possible.

The main factor behind the exact performance of a solid state drive is the controller chip, and there are several suppliers of such processors.

What storage solutions developers do is come up with the product concept and get the chips from one of said suppliers, then build it into the device.

Apacer decided to use the most popular controllers available, the ones invented by SandForce, when making the Turbo II AS602 series.

Simply put, the solid state drives, while sticking to the same form factor as most of their peers (2.5-inch), can reach transfer speeds just short of 300 MB/s.

Reading tasks are accomplished at 285 MB/s, while data is written at a maximum rate of 275 MB/s.

As one has no doubt guessed, the interface utilized by the Apacer Turbo II AS602 is SATA 3.0 Gbps, while the type of chips employed is MLC (multi-level cell) NAND.

Other specifications include TRIM support, a MTBF of 1 million hours and up to 30,000 IOPS and 13,000 IOPS for random reading and writing, respectively.

"With its technical superiority in consumer and enterprise SSD as well as the use of SandForce SF-1222 controller, Apacer has managed to create the nearly impeccable AS602 SSD,” said the company's press release..

“Compared with its SSD counterparts, Apacer’s AS602 SSD has not only the fastest sequential transfer speed but fastest random read and write speed as well. It features incredible reliability and makes up all the SSD shortcomings so as to address the speed needs for users,” Apacer added.

There are three models available, with capacities of 60 GB, 120 GB and 240 GB, respectively, reportedly selling for $172, $362 and $672, respectively.