SK Hynix Beetle X31 review

Evocative designs, catchy names, and enticing packaging all assist to promote a product. Witness Seagate and WD’s observe of selling principally the identical storage gadgets at each mainstream customers and avid gamers. To not point out Apple, which has raked in trillions off of its famend consideration to product presentation and intelligent advertising and marketing terminology.

SK Hynix has adopted swimsuit to an extent with its excellent-performing Beetle X31 exterior SSD. The identify and packaging are suggestive (The Mummy?), as is the design… considerably. I really want they’d gone to city theme-wise with the drive’s precise look, however given the chart-topping efficiency, I’ll let that slide.

Additional studying: See our roundup of the perfect transportable exhausting drive & SSD chart to find out about competing merchandise.

Design & Value

With a vivid sufficient creativeness (and the suggestion of the image on the packaging proven under), the X31 does have considerably the looks of a beetle. With out the appendages or division of the elytra and thorax, that’s.

SK Hynix may need accomplished higher calling it “Scarab” and utilizing colours extra evocative than the pale gold it ships in. However that’s a matter for advertising and marketing professionals.

The Beetle X31 is in regards to the dimension of a scarab beetle at round 1.8-inches vast, 2.9-inches lengthy, and 0.57-inches thick. It weighs lower than two ounces and the metallic shell appears very rugged. There are non-skid pads on the underside, and a Sort-C port and exercise gentle on one finish.

As of this writing, the X31 Beetle is offered on Amazon in 512GB for $71.06 and 1TB at $92.69. Within the UK, it’s £65.99 and £85.99 respectively on Amazon UK.

That’s above common for a 1TB, 10Gbps USB SSD and is perhaps a troublesome promote when well-known Samsung’s 1TB T7 Portable is $10 cheaper or £20 less in the UK.

The innards of the X31 have to be NVMe from the 1GBps efficiency we noticed. SATA tops out at round 550MBps, ruling that out. The inner design little doubt leverages considered one of SK Hynix’s personal SSDs. TLC NAND is probably going employed, judging from its efficiency when secondary cache runs out. Extra on that under.

Efficiency

The Beetle X31 proved barely sooner than the competitors general, although the margin could be largely unnoticeable to the bare eye. Nonetheless, sooner is quicker, and SK Hynix can hold its hat on the Beetle’s success.

The sequential single-queue, single-thread learn is the place the X31 made hay in CrystalDiskMark 8. In any other case, it was only a hair slower than the SanDisk Pro-G40.

The SK Hynix Beetle X31 turned in a sooner combination time than the 10Gbps competitors in our 48GB switch assessments.

Although the Beetle X31 turned in an excellent 450GB write time, it went about reaching it in odd trend. It began out at round 450MBps for the primary 50GB or so, jumped to round 850MBps for almost all of the write, then when it ran out of secondary cache close to the tip (treating the TLC as SLC, writing one bit/degree as a substitute of three bits/eight voltage ranges), it dropped to round 250MBps.

It’s the primary stint that’s uncommon, not the center or finish. This was replicated over all of the preliminary runs, in addition to the additional runs we ran to verify of what we had been seeing.

Be aware that the time proven under occurred when the drive was squeaky new. It turned in considerably slower occasions (about 100 seconds longer) writing 450GB after our 48GB assessments had been run. In different phrases, count on considerably slower giant file writes from the 1TB drive throughout on a regular basis use.

The Beetle X31 took the number-one spot amongst 10Gbps SSDs in artificial benchmarks and our 48GB switch assessments. It may additionally have taken the highest spot from the OWC Envoy Professional FX within the 450GB write if it had been accessible as a 2TB mannequin, although it would nonetheless have been shut given the X31’s propensity for gradual begins.

Do you have to purchase the SK Hynix Beetle X31?

The X31 is at present our prime 10Gbps performer, however being barely sooner doesn’t offset its steeper price ticket. Regardless, it’s a cushty design with an amusing and entertaining moniker. Efficiency throughout the competitors being so shut, store this class on value.

How we take a look at

Exterior drive assessments at present make the most of Home windows 11, 64-bit working on an X790 (PCIe 4.0/5.0) motherboard/i5-12400 CPU combo with two Kingston Fury 32GB DDR5 4800MHz modules (64GB of reminiscence complete). Each 20Gbps USB and Thunderbolt 4 are built-in to the again panel and Intel CPU/GPU graphics are used. The 48GB switch assessments make the most of an ImDisk RAM disk taking on 58GB of the 64GB of complete reminiscence. The 450GB file is transferred from a Samsung 990 Professional 2TB which additionally runs the OS.

Every take a look at is carried out on a newly formatted and TRIM’d drive so the outcomes are optimum. Be aware that in regular use, as a drive fills up, efficiency will lower resulting from much less NAND for secondary caching, in addition to different elements.

Caveat: The efficiency numbers proven apply solely to the drive we had been shipped and to the capability examined. SSD efficiency can and can fluctuate by capability resulting from extra or fewer chips to shotgun reads/writes throughout and the quantity of NAND accessible for secondary caching. Distributors additionally sometimes swap elements. In the event you ever discover a big discrepancy between the efficiency you expertise and that which we report, by all means, tell us.