Silicon-Power A80 Review: An Excellent Generic NVMe SSD

The P34A80 SSD (model A80) is Silicon-Power's first full NVMe solid-state drive, and, just like the name, it seems quite generic. The drive doesn't have anything special of its own. 

But the standard SSD has one thing going to itself, the price. Considering the current cost of as low as around $.13 per gigabyte, it delivers. In testing, the P34A80 proved to be more of a sprinter than a marathoner. It excelled in small jobs but struggled a bit in extended operations.

So, for those who just need a fast boot drive for daily tasks, this NVMe SSD is an excellent buy. Those needing one for heavy jobs, like video editing, should consider the Samsung 970 Pro instead.

Silicon-Power A80: A generic NVMe drive

Other than the brand label, the Silicon-Power P34A80 seems to have little to do with its maker. It uses a Phison's PS5012-E12 controller and flash memory from Toshiba. The PS5012-E12 is an up-to-date controller that delivers faster performance than previous revisions. So, the A80 has some power.

The drive uses the M.2 2280 standard design, it's 80 mm long and 22 mm wide, about the size of a gum stick. It's double-sided—there are memory chips on both sides—so it's slightly thicker than single-sided drives. But it's still very light at just 8 grams (.28 ounce).

The P34A80 is a full 4-lane PCIe SSD. It only works with a laptop that has am M-key M.2 slot. On a desktop, you can also resort to an adapter.

Silicon-Power A80: Hardware specifications

Capacities	256GB	512GB	1TB	2TB
Part Numer	SP256GBP34A80M28	SP512GBP34A80M28	SP001TBP34A80M28	SP002TBP34A80M28
Interface	PCIe Gen 3x4, NVMe 1.3	Same	Same	Same
Design	M.2 (2280)	Same	Same	Same
Controller	Phison PS5012-E12	Same	Same	Same
NAND Flash Memory	Toshiba’s BiCS3 256Gb 64L 3D TLC	Same	Same	Same
Sequential Read	3,400 MB/s	Same	Same	Same
Sequential Write	3000 MB/s	Same	Same	Same
Endurance (Terabyte Written)	125 TBW	250 TBW	500 TBW	1000 TBW
U.S. Retail Price (at time of review)	$47.99	$74.99	$134.99	$259.99
Cost Per Gigabyte	$0.19	$0.15	$0.13	$0.13
Warranty	5 years	Same	Same	Same

Comparatively high endurance

The Silicon-Power P34A80 uses 3D flash memory, which provides storage space at a low cost. The drive also has a very high level of endurance compared to others, according to Silicon-Power's estimate.

Its four capacities, ranging from 256 GB to 2TB, have the endurance rating from 380 TBW to 3115 TBW, respectively. That's more than triple that of the WD Blue SN550.

To put things in perspective, 380 TB is a lot of data. You'll have to write some 70 GB of data to the 256GB version of the A80 per day and every day for fifteen years straight before its endurance runs out.

As you can imagine, it can be very time-consuming to test a drive's endurance, so it boils down to how confident the vendor is in its product. In this case, the A80 is in good hands; it gets a generous five-year warranty from Silicon Power.

Endurance increases with the capacities, so if you get a higher-capacity version of the P34A80, you'll be able to write even more before having to worry about its endurance.

Plug-n-play, generic all the way

Like most NVMe drives, the Silicon-Power P34A80 is plug-and-play. You won't need to download and install the driver software to make it work. Just install it on an NVMe M.2 slot, and you can expect to use it just like any other internal drive.

But, unlike other SSDs, it doesn't have a software utility dashboard. Well, there's this SP ToolBox application that you can use to check on the drive's health information. But the software is so generic, and it treats the Silicon-Power P34A80 just like it does any other SSDs. There's nothing specifically about the drive, like firmware update or over-provisioning, that you can do with the application.

By the way, to download anything from Silicon-Power's website, you'll need to enter a verification code—a form of CAPTCHA—but the code didn't always work in my case. It was a bit frustrating.

That said, everything about the Silicon-Power P34A80 seems generic, which can cause concerns about the quality of the drive.

Silicon-Power P34A80: A fast sprinter

The P34A80, for the most part, did well in my testing, in standard tests.

When used as the main drive for a computer, it helped the machine boot up and launch applications very fast. Faster than many standard SATA drives I've tested, and much quicker than any hard drive.

In fact, the drive topped the charts in some tests.

In copy (sequential) tests, for example, the SSD did quite amazingly in my trials that used 10 GB of data or less, registering 2675 MB/s and 2509 MB/s of sustained speeds, for reading and writing, respectively.

However, when having to deal with 15 GB or more of data at a time, the drive did much worse at less than 1000 MB/s during most of the process. For this reason, in the read/write combo tests, it averaged just around 675 MB/s.

Similarly, in random access tests, the P34A80 did well in standard synthetic short tasks. But when I used it to edit a big video, it did a lot worse than the test results suggested—just about the same as a standard SATA SSD.

This type of bust performance is common in budget NVMe drives. I've seen that in many others, such as the Crucial P1 or the WD Blue. It doesn't mean the SSD is no good. It's just that you shouldn't use it if you intend to run a lot of heavy tasks.

For general daily usage, this type of performance will still give you an excellent experience.

Conclusion

The Silicon-Power P34A80 is a frill-free generic NVMe SSD that gives you a satisfying user experience at a low cost. Silicon-Power's 5-year warranty is a good counterbalance for the drive's generic, non-specific feel and spartan user-accessible feature set.

If you're in the market to upgrade your home computer to NVMe, Silicon-Power A80 MVNe is an easy recommendation.