VisionTek SSD and SK hynix SSD Review: Two Super Fast SSDs. No Waiting for Reads or Writes

VisionTek SSD and SK hynix SSD Review

Hopefully, the SEO gods will bring readers to this page. The long names of components make it difficult to create a post that optimizes for SEO, even if I am only reviewing one product. That I’m including two products here, well, I appreciate you if you found the post. The names of the products were rationalized from their Amazon listing to shorten them and put their company name, model number and capacity in the same order.

What I evaluated for this post are two relatively similar SSDs: The VisionTek DLX4 Pro 1TB and the SK hynix Platinum P41 2TB. Put either inside a gaming or creative computer, and gain benefit from their speed. One is slightly faster (the SK hynix SSD) than the other; both fit into NVMe PCIe sockets.

As background, PCIe sockets transfer up to 25 times more data than a SATA socket. They are at least twice as fast, and because they communicate directly to the host CPU, they are generally more responsive.

Both SSDs are PCIe NVMe Gen4. Once installed, the only major difference in the eval units is that VisionTek supplied a 1TB drive, while SK hynix provided a 2TB drive, so more space.

As I have stated before, we do not perform benchmarking. I purchased drive enclosures (see listing below) for both SSDs, allowing them to attach to various devices, including Macs and PCs. I found them to be compatible with the enclosure, not requiring any additional hardware or heatsinks, and they worked as plug-and-play drives via either USB-C to USB-C cables or USB-A to USB-C cables. As with any external device, the USB performance is limited by the speed of the host port, so the reads and writes took relatively longer on older laptops. That said, they worked on older devices without an issue. They formatted equally well with general Windows formats or proprietary Windows or macOS formats.

From a business standpoint, that’s what you need to know. The drives are components. They will either go directly into the M.2 (M Key) slot of another device or live in their own M.2 enclosure. Several USB hubs and other peripherals now support NVMe SSD as add-ons, offering a slot for easy installation. Installation required placing the drive into the device’s M.2 slot, pushing the drive down to level, and locking it down with a rubber nub.

Per the specifications, the VisionTek drive is slightly faster, but at numbers that won’t really matter in the real world. Gamers and AI enthusiasts might notice, but even then, they would need to look very close or run a system, or systems, where minor differences in IO speed would compound. Again, on a single device for business, these drives both do a great job.

As for the technology, the SK hynix drive employs cell interlayer height reduction, layer variable timing control, and ultra-precise alignment on its 176-layer NAND flash memory. VisionTek uses 3D (stacked) TLC (3-bits per cell) NAND. SK also uses more proprietary technology, including their Aries controller and the SLC buffer.

I also give higher marks to SK hynix for their thoughtful all-paper packaging printed with soy ink. While the VisionTek device was shipped in a recyclable plastic package, it was still plastic.

Specifications

The following specifications and details come from the company sites. While labeled in this table as 4K random reads and writes, the SK hynix site only listed “random performance,” which is usually measured in 4K reads and writes because of the drive architecture. While that measure shows a wide disparity between the drives, it is a number that is mostly meaningless in day-to-day work applications.

VisionTek SDD and SK hynix SSD and: The bottom line

Either of these SSDs will provide fast and efficient storage with an estimated 1.5-million hours of use for both devices. The SK hynix drive is slightly faster and comes in better packaging. Gamers may also appreciate SK hynix’s more gamer-forward marketing.

SK hynix and VisionTek provided the Platinum P41 2TB and VisionTek DLX4 Pro 1TB SSDs for review. Images courtesy of SK hynix and VisionTek unless otherwise noted.

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