ADATA XPG Gammix S50 Lite, M.2

The ADATA XPG Gammix S50 Lite is the first SSD of its kind: a PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD aimed at the mid-range mainstream segment of the consumer SSD market. Most Gen4 SSDs on the market were designed to go after the high end space, though the earliest such examples have now effectively been pushed down to mid-range by the arrival of a second wave of even faster Gen4 drives. By aiming for a more mainstream (and less expensive) role, the S50 Lite doesn't even try to make full use of the bandwidth offered by PCIe Gen4, and at its best it can only use a little bit of the extra speed over PCIe Gen3.

ADATA has been consistently expanding its line-up of XPG, or Xtreme Performance Gaming branded hardware, targeting PC enthusiasts and gamers. The XPG family now consists of everything from micoSDXC cards all the way on up to full gaming systems and notebooks. XPG's SSDs (Solid State Drives), however, are arguably the most extensive array of products in the company's portfolio. ADATA has a myriad of XPG SSDs available, at a wide variety of price points and performance levels. The two drives we’ll be showing you here today, the new ADATA XPG GAMMIX S70 and XPG GAMMIX S50 Lite, are both bleeding-edge PCI Express 4.0 NVMe drives, packing some of Micron’s latest TLC NAND.

The ADATA XPG GAMMIX S50 Lite is our very first look at the Silicon Motion SM2267 controller and how the budget PCIe Gen4 market is coming together. It is really exciting to see affordable native PCIe Gen4 controllers finally making it to market. The XPG GAMMIX S50 Lite is a value oriented mainstream drive and is what we could consider an entry-level drive. It performed pretty good in most benchmarks, but it did outstanding in our game load time test. It simply blew away all the other NAND Flash based drives and that is a pretty big deal to gamers that are looking for quick load times. It also seems like a pretty durable little drive as the XPG Gammix S50 Lite features TLC NAND Flash memory and a pre-applied heatsink. ADATA backs this 1TB model with a 740 TBW endurance rating and a 5-year warranty, so it should give you many years of performance before it gives up the ghost. ADATA XPG GAMMIX S50 Lite 1TB NVMe SSD Retail Box When it comes to pricing the XPG GAMMIX S50 Lite that we reviewed here today is available at its MSRP of $149.99 with free shipping over at Amazon. The only kicker is that it shows an in stock date of December 28th, 2020 with a delivery date of January 2021. Not many people are going to want to wait 2-3 months for an SSD purchase, so just a heads up that you might have to hunt one of these drives down. At the end of the day the XPG GAMMIX S50 Lite shows that more PCIe Gen4 drives are entering the market and at lower price points. The Silicon Motion SM2267 controller seems to be decent for lite workloads, gaming and overall general use. Once this drive becomes in-stock and goes below MSRP it will be one to keep an eye on. This looks like it could be the value play for the PCIe Gen4 market!

ADATA is Taiwan's largest manufacturer of flash storage and DRAM memory for computers. They have been at the forefront of SSD development for many years, bringing us famous SSDs like the SX8200, SX900, and S510. XPG is one of ADATA's sub-brands and creates products optimized for the needs of gamers.