Angelbird SSDs Reviews and more

Reviews 52142 Published 2014-08-18 11:52 by Philipp Esselbach

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Here a roundup of todays reviews and articles:

Angelbird 512GB wrk SSD Review
Angelbird SSD WRK 256 GB SSD Review
Angelbird SSD wrk 512 GB
Angelbird SSD wrk SSD Review (512GB) - Workmanship, Speed and Value
Cooler Masters Elite 110 mini-ITX case reviewed
Gamescom 2014 Gallery
GPU App Showdown: AMD Gaming Evolved vs Nvidia GeForce Experience
LUXA2 PL2 6000mAh Leather Power Bank Review
OCZ ARC 100 240GB Solid State Drive Review
The TR Podcast 159: Kaveri returns, Shield delivers, and Brix gets game

Angelbird 512GB wrk SSD Review

Angelbird. Not the first name many would associate with SSD technology – however this Austrian company have earned a reputation in the high end sector dealing with design professionals, music producers and film makers. One of the interesting aspects with Angelbird is that their drives are designed and manufactured in Austria. Today we are looking at their new 512GB wrk drive – a high end model using the Silicon Motion 2246EN controller.

Read full article @ KitGuru

Angelbird SSD WRK 256 GB SSD Review

We review the Angelbird SSD WRK 256 GB SSD. Angelbird (a new solid-state drive manufacturer based in Austria) recently released this new addition to their SSD lineup. The series is to compete with Samsung and Micron mostly, in both price and performance. The end result is a very capable and overall fast SSD that can keep up with that tough competition in the market.

The WRK line of solid-state storage units is actually a bit faster than most high-end drives made of NAND chips (Synchronous MLC) yet, is intended as the more affordable SSD series within their lineup. The SSDs are rated with a whopping 560 MB/s sequential read, running over the all too familiar SATA 6.0 Gbps connection interface. Interestingly however, a relatively unknown controller from Silicon Motion is being used. And as our results will show you, this controller can compete just fine. There is a 'but' though, and that will be write performance. See, Angelbird would like to offer a more competitive product price wise on the market, and as such, less components means reduced costs. Only 4 NAND ICs are needed for this product for the 128GB model (eight on the 256 GB model), so while the read performance is exceptionally good, less memory NAND channels means compromise in write performance. And that will be the achilles heel on the smaller volume WRK SSDs.

Now then, the WRK makes use of the normal 2.5-inch form factor and has a thickness of 7mm. TRIM is supported, of course. I've stated it a couple of times already, it really is surprising to see where we have gotten. The SSD market is fierce and crowded though. While stability and safety of your data have become a number one priority for the manufacturers, the technology keeps advancing in a fast pace as it does, the performance numbers a good SSD offers these days are simply breathtaking. A 450 to 550 MB/sec on SATA3 is the norm for a single controller based SSD. Next to that, the past year NAND flash memory (the storage memory used inside an SSD) has become much cheaper as well. Prices now roughly settle just under 50 cents USD per GB. That was two-to-threefold two years ago. As such SSD technology and NAND storage has gone mainstream. The market is huge, fierce and competitive, but it brought us where we are today... nice volume SSDs at acceptable prices with very fast performance. Not one test system in my lab has an HDD; everything runs on SSD, while I receive and retrieve my bigger chunks of data from a NAS server here in the office. The benefits are performance, speed, low power consumption and no noise. You can say that I evangelize SSDs, yes Sir .. I am a fan, an SSD addict if you will.

Read full article @ Guru3D

Angelbird SSD wrk 512 GB

Angelbird is a young solid-state drive manufacturer from Austria. Their new SSD wrk is built on the Silicon Motion SM2246 controller, which delivers good real-life performance in our testing. While a price of $300 for 512 GB won't shock the market these days, the drive is affordable overall.

Read full article @ techPowerUp

Angelbird SSD wrk SSD Review (512GB) - Workmanship, Speed and Value

Being niche in a dog eat dog tech market can be very risky. Being niche in the SSD industry is straight up crazy as NAND manufacturers price their SSDs so low that 3rd party SSD manufacturers find it very hard to compete; or they shut down. More than a few companies have slowed, or shut down their SSD production and, in fact, there are also more than a few SSDs that we have reviewed that were never released. Angelbird has seemed to sidestep the frenzy and, at least with their SSD2Go line, build quality has played a major part in their success. Today, we are taking a close look at the Angelbird SSD wrk and, looking at this picture, Angelbird seems to want to continue on its own path, so to speak.

Read full article @ The SSD Review

Cooler Masters Elite 110 mini-ITX case reviewed

Cooler Master's Elite 110 is a tiny case with a price to match. Is it a good value? We loaded it up with parts and ran it through our testing gauntlet to find out.

Read full article @ The Tech Report

Gamescom 2014 Gallery

Each year, Gamescom Cologne, is increasing in size and numbers through footfall of eager fans ready to get their hands on the next generation of games, along with publishers ready to show their latest builds off to the general public. As expected at Gamescom, AAA title publisher go all out with next-level full feature booths, themed around their latest releases with no expense spared.

Read full article @ Kitguru

GPU App Showdown: AMD Gaming Evolved vs Nvidia GeForce Experience

Since last year AMD and Nvidia have both been fairly eager to develop and push their own software to be used with their graphics cards products. AMD released their Gaming Evolved app in September 2013 which is produced by Raptr while Nvidia released their in-house software called GeForce Experience in January 2013. Both AMD and Nvidia have been eager to lavish unique features onto their software that incentivise prospective graphics card buyers to choose them over the competition. This can also be seen as part of a broader trend among hardware vendors who are keen to offer just more than hardware. To the keen observer it has been a dramatic transformation over the past 2-3 years with SSD, motherboard, graphics card and even power supply vendors all offering value-added software to their products.

Read full article @ eTeknix

LUXA2 PL2 6000mAh Leather Power Bank Review

How many times have you left your home or office just to notice that your smartphone is low on battery? Well i think it has happened pretty much to all of us at least one time and since this can be very annoying especially during the summer it's no surprise that most stores that deal in electronics have placed portable batteries (power banks) in the top 3 gadgets one needs to have when away from home. Just like most electronics however not all portable batteries are the made equal and so prior to making your choice out of a very large number of available models you need to do your research and find out what components each manufacturer uses. LUXA2 may not be the most recognizable name in the industry but they have a good range of quality products including portable batteries like the PL2 6000mAh Leather Power Bank which we have here with us today.

LUXA2- is a Taiwanese based designer and manufacturer of award winning portable accessories. Established in 2009, LUXA2 is committed to creating the best user-experience by consistently designing and innovating each and every product from concept to reality. LUXA2 believes that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication; and it is with this belief that our product designs are not only simplistic in nature but also incorporates functionality and premium aesthetic appeal at affordable prices. We promote not just products but total solutions. LUXA2s’ products are sold worldwide in major consumer and electronic retailers and online via www.luxa2.com and www.ttbuy.com.tw. Headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan, the LUXA2 team possesses many talented specialists from all around the globe ranging from: sales mavericks, marketing aficionados, design wizards and R&D demons which are all lead by a top-gun management team. With offices in the USA, China, Australia and Germany, LUXA2’s presence on the global stage is ever-increasing to ultimately bring our mission of creating a simple, unique and luxury lifestyle to customers, and ultimately, a uniquely you.

The very first thing you need to understand about portable rechargeable batteries (power banks) is that just like regular batteries their capacity and endurance through time (life) depends almost entirely on the quality of the cells used. LUXA2 is of course well aware of this and since they focus on quality quite a bit inside the PL2 they've placed two high capacity 3000mAh lithium-polymer rechargeable cells by Samsung. Interior quality however is only part of what makes a good portable battery and so in order to give it a more "elegant" feeling and look LUXA2 has dressed it with good quality PU (Poly) synthetic leather which makes it much easier to blend inside clothes. LUXA2 has equipped the PL2 both with a 2.1A USB charging port and two small LEDs (small but quite powerful so make sure you don't look straight at them) which can be used as a flashlight in cases of an emergency. Time however to take a closer look and see if it's everything we hope it to be.

Read full article @ NikKTech

OCZ ARC 100 240GB Solid State Drive Review

There is absolutely no shortage on the market any more when it comes to Solid State Drives (SSD), but not all of them are aimed at the same users and setup scenarios. So to add one more to the list, OCZ has just launched its new range of ARC 100 drives. A budget friendly series of highly reliable drives.

The ARC series is where performance meets affordability. The platform is built for a sustained performance and mixed workloads while keeping an IO consistency. Built upon the brand new Toshiba A19nm Multi-Level Cell (MLC) flash and with a heart in form of OCZ’s own Indilinx Barefoot 3 M10 controller.

With OCZ now a part of Toshiba, this could be considered a complete in-house product. This is also one of the reasons the drive can be offered at such a low price and the new ARC 100 comes in three sizes. 120 GB for a MSRP of $74.99, the 240 GB for $119.99 and the 480GB can be had for $239.99.

Read full article @ eTeknix