Digit Zero1 Awards and Best Buy Awards 2023: Best Performing NVMe SSD

In the rapidly evolving world of NVMe SSDs, the past year has been a testament to remarkable growth and innovation. Despite an impressive 80% growth in the internal SSD segment in India, the number of new launches has been modest. This growth is primarily attributed to the shift from hard drives to SSDs in laptops. The Indian market is predominantly occupied by PCIe Gen 3 and Gen 4 NVMe SSDs, while the NVMe Gen 5 SSDs, known for their high cost and tendency to run hot, are slowly making their presence felt. These Gen 5 SSDs often come equipped with exotic heatsinks featuring heat pipes, catering to their cooling needs.

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Just like the past year and the year before that, Phison continues to dominate the third-party SSD controller market. All the top designs are currently powered by Phison controllers. The mainstream brands haven’t launched that many SSDs this year. It may take some time before PCIe Gen 5 becomes mainstream, considering the heat and cost factors. This was the case back when Gen 4 SSDs started appearing.

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Heatsinks became more of a necessity to ensure sustained performance otherwise there was a clear and marked performance degradation. Interestingly, the price gap between SSDs and hard drives is narrowing, so we’re looking at a near future where even budget laptops and PCs will predominantly feature SSDs over HDDs.

Digit Zero1 Award Winner: AORUS Gen 5 10000 SSD (Best Buy)

Price: ₹29,572

The AORUS Gen 5 10000 SSD, crowned as this year’s winner, stands out with its Phison E26 controller. It boasts an optional heatsink, essential for optimal performance. This SSD impresses with sequential read speeds reaching approximately 10,000 MBps, not yet the peak of PCIe Gen 5’s capability, as evidenced by their faster Gen 5 12000 SSD which has been making some waves in international markets. Latency-wise, the unit shows a similar performance curve as the Seagate FireCuda 530, which was a flagship from Seagate among Gen 4 SSDs.

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So you can say that the AORUS Gen 5 10000 is better in raw performance without taking a hit in the latency scores. The unit comes with a very tall heatsink with not one but two heat pipes. It does get a little hot but as we mentioned previously, this is typical of first-generation launches. While power efficiency is compromised, typical for a first-generation SSD, its high performance more than compensates, leading to its top spot in this year’s Zero1 Awards.

Runner-Up: Kingston FURY Renegade (Buy now)

Price: ₹18,000

The Kingston FURY Renegade, our runner-up, is a mature product based on the Phison E18 controller, a staple for PCIe Gen 4 SSDs. It delivers sequential read and write speeds of 7300 MBps and 6000 MBps, respectively, and comes with a heatsink. It doesn’t take full advantage of the E18 platform since we have seen designs with write speeds hitting 7000 MBps in the past. While its performance could be better, the balance it strikes between performance and price-per-GB makes it a strong contender in the market.

Digit Best Buy Award Winner: WD Blue SN580 (Buy now)

Price: ₹10,819 (2 TB)

For those seeking value for money, the WD Blue SN580 emerges as the ‘Best Buy’. Its competitive pricing, paralleling hard drives, combined with performance that is nearly 30 times greater, offers exceptional value. The cost-per-GB of the SN580 comes down to Rs.5.3/GB which is quite great compared to its peers which sport a slight price premium for the performance that they boast. The SN580 exhibits sequential read and write speeds of about 4150 MBps, so you’ve for performance and great value for money in this package.

For more information on Digit Zero1 Award winners across various categories of products, please visit: https://www.digit.in/zero1-awards

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Mithun Mohandas

Mithun Mohandas is an Indian technology journalist with 10 years of experience covering consumer technology. He is currently employed at Digit in the capacity of a Managing Editor. Mithun has a background in Computer Engineering and was an active member of the IEEE during his college days. He has a penchant for digging deep into unravelling what makes a device tick. If there's a transistor in it, Mithun's probably going to rip it apart till he finds it. At Digit, he covers processors, graphics cards, storage media, displays and networking devices aside from anything developer related. As an avid PC gamer, he prefers RTS and FPS titles, and can be quite competitive in a race to the finish line. He only gets consoles for the exclusives. He can be seen playing Valorant, World of Tanks, HITMAN and the occasional Age of Empires or being the voice behind hundreds of Digit videos. View Full Profile