We’ve been busy lately working with a variety of SSDs, from expensive ones like the Samsung and Sabrent to less expensive ones like the Kingston NV2. But today’s big attraction is actually a container called the ASUS TUF Gaming A1, not these flash drives per se. External SSDs come in a “ready to use” form factor that requires no assembly at all, despite the fact that they have grown increasingly popular in recent years due to manufacturing maturity that has also significantly lowered the price. As for SSD enclosures, its goal is to “mobilise” any excess M.2 2280 drive you may have laying around and turn it into a high-speed, portable storage device that you can take with you wherever you go.
Never before has installing SSDs in an enclosure been so simple, yet because to decisions made by Taiwanese society, there are still a few little issues. Let’s begin with the most important phase, which is the product’s opening. There will almost certainly be a slotted or cross screwdriver inside every home, but not many hexagonal ones. So it might not be that easy to open the TUF Gaming A1. You’re probably wondering at this point: Sure, society gives us keys, but what will we do if they go lost? In the first instance, we’ll have to buy a new hex key, which we might have avoided by choosing a different set of screws.
Specifications
- Usable Capacities: empty enclosure.
- SSD Compatibility: M.2 2242, 2260, 2280.
- Interface: USB-C 3.2 Gen 2×1 (10Gbps).
- Form Factor: External.
- Dimensions: 125.8 x 54.27 x 13.3mm
- Drive Weight: 142g.
Where to Get ASUS TUF Gaming A1?
Even before we began conducting actual testing to evaluate the capabilities of the portable SSD, we were confident that the ASUS TUF Gaming AS1000 would meet the claimed performance in synthetics due to the drive’s setup and connection interface. Since even the most basic M.2 PCI-E 3.0 x4 can achieve substantially faster rates, the USB 3.2 Gen 2 interface (10 GB/s) will be the only thing holding this system back. Furthermore, the disc wrote all 100 GB at this same speed. SLC caching is clearly used to attain such performance, and the capacity of such a buffer is one third of the SSD’s available space. These are excellent circumstances for a portable drive, particularly if frequent storing is the primary use case for the device.