ADATA S596 Turbo Review: JMicron 616

ADATA S596 Turbo 128GB Review

Manufacturer: ADATA
UK Price (as Reviewed): TBA
US Price (as Reviewed): $269 (ex. Tax)

As it was the first to market with JMicron's JMF612 chipset earlier this year, ADATA has updated its S596 SSD with the more recent 616 controller chip and tacked on a fancy 'Turbo' suffix to the name to let us know it's, well, been boosted.

The JMF616 builds on the foundations of the JMF612 and provides out-of-the-box Windows 7 TRIM support, and duly claims improved performance too. ADATA gently informed us that the reported 260MB/s read and 210MB/sec write maybe a little overzealous though - a best case scenario - even though ADATA's website and box still brandishes these numbers.


Just like the S596 with its JMF612 controller, the newer JMF616 in the S596 Turbo is paired with Intel NAND and a Hynix DDR2 cache. However, the S596 Turbo doubles the capacity of the previous 64MB cache to 128MB.

Unlike many other controllers these days, JMicron continues to include a mini-USB port option in its SSD controller chip, so it can be used as an external drive without the need for an enclosure, or extra power. It's a nice backup feature should all else fail, although frankly it's not something we've ever heard demanded from readers - we doubt anyone would miss the port if it was removed.

On the sticker-side of the SDD, ADATA integrates a little blue activity LED which is actually useful as visual feedback for checking if the SSD is working. With no moving heads or spinning platters like an normal hard disk, it's difficult to know the difference between a dead drive, a duff cable, a dodgy PSU or broken SATA port.


ADATA ships the S596 Turbo in an anodised brushed black aluminium case - that is, a very thin aluminium case. It's not like the thicker casing of Samsung's SSDs or the steel of Kingston and Intel drives. I0t still looks good and provides adequate protection for the internals, however. In the retail box, ADATA ships an ocean-blue anodised 3.5in to 2.5in drive bay adapter and mini-USB to USB cable.

Specifications

• Controller: JMicron JMF616
  
• Cache: 128MB Hynix HY5PS1G1631C
  
• NAND: 16 x 8GB Intel 29F64G08CAMDB MLC
  
• Quoted Maximum read: up to 260MB/sec
  
• Quoted Maximum write: up to 210MB/sec
  
• MTBF: 1 million hours
  
• Warranty: 3 Years
  
• Formatted Capacity: 119.7GB
  
• Extras: Retail box includes mini-USB to USB connector and 3.5in to 2.5in internal adapter for PC chassis.
  
• Part Number: AS596TB-128GM-C