addlink S91 M2230 1TB NVME

4. Conclusion

Review Pages

1. Introduction
2. Retail Package
3. Performance
4. Conclusion

addlink has a long tradition of introducing affordable storage solutions, combined with high performance and great warranty. The recently released S91 series comes in a small and compact form factor covering both M2230/M2242 slots and aim for portable users that wish to upgrade their internal storage. The S91 series is compatible with Valve's SteamDeck, upcoming Asus Rog Ally gaming consoles, and any other device that supports PCIe protocol. The S91 series supports the latest PCIe Gen4 that supports up to 7GB/sec reading/writing speeds (theoretical).

The retail package is simple and complete and we liked the fact that it comes in a secure shell that will protect it from transportation hazards. The installation method is very simple. We tested the 1TB version that after formatting will get you around 953GB of free space. The S91 1TB M2230 NVME is based upon Micron 3D NAND and with the included Phison controller, manages to deliver very good performance, that in our tests, even performed better than what addlink has stated. In short, you can expect high reading speeds of ~6.0GB/sec with higher 64KB file sizes, while writing performance should top around 4.27GB/sec again after using 64KB files (with Windows 10 write cache enabled).

While the S91 series has no build-in DRAM, using the host's internal DRAM, really helped copy big files, and you can write files up to 100GB (single file) without any drop in performance, which is very good. How about thermals? We have done many tests and as happens with all Gen4-enabled NVMEs, it needs some kind of passive cooling. If you don't have any kind of thermal passive, the drive will get up to 80Celsius, and after that point will thermal throttle. This of course happens ONLY when using constant reading/writing on the device, which isn't a true-life scenario for portable devices.

Concluding this review we can say that the addlink S91 series come in various capacities (512GB/1TB/2TB) will accelerate the performance of portable devices (either gaming or business) and the retail price is affordable for all users. The warranty is 5 years on par with other storage manufacturers and we can suggest this product for all users who wish to upgrade their storage, like with our be-loved SteamDeck :-)