SP Armor A62 Game Drive Review.
In today’s world of huge files, there is never enough hard disk space, especially if you are a gamer. Just Red Dead Redemption 2 is enough to make the standard PlayStation 4 scream at just over 100GB. Don’t even make us start working on Call of Duty: Warzone and its ridiculous storage requirements.
The problem, of course, is that additional storage is expensive A decent-sized external drive can start at $ 150 or more. Even if you find it at a bargain price, you need to make sure that it is fast enough to load games directly from an external drive.
The Silicon Power Armor A26 Gaming Drive is a low-cost external hard drive designed for gamers, designed not to be thrown in a backpack or carried from place to place. The company sent one to us for review at Online Tech Tips.
A look and a feeling meaningless
The Silicon Power Armor A26 gaming storage is available in two colors: blue and black/green. Silicon Power sent a blue version. The case is pretty basic, but the no-frills aesthetic is part of the charm. Weighing just over 12 ounces, the drive fits comfortably in your hand. Not too light or too heavy.
The combination of cable and tie runs along the outside of the drive and makes it easy to store various cables on top of the drive itself. The rest of the drive itself is pretty simple. The textured appearance gives it rigidity, and the drive is considered impact-resistant.
Considering this is an SSD and not an HDD, it already has some shock resistance. It also has an IPX4 rating for water resistance; In other words, it will withstand splashes of liquid, but not immersion in water. He can survive falling into a puddle, but it’s probably best not to test this statement.
Silicon Power Game Drive is designed to be carried from place to place. Our tests showed that he easily moved between many cars. If something happens to your drive, it comes with a three-year warranty.
storage capacity
There are four versions of the Silicon Power Armor A26 Game Drive. The first is the base level 1TB model that retails for $ 50. The next model is a 2TB model for $65. From there, you can choose the 4TB model for $103, or finally the 5TB option for $138 Silicon Power Submitted 5 TB Version for Testing
After plugging in and formatting, there is 4.6 TB of the drive remaining available for actual use. Files moved to and from disk without difficulty, although his PassMark score was at the bottom of the scale. He got a mediocre result and was only 47% better than the competition.
Real-world performance
Silicon Power Game Drive is primarily aimed at gamers. In fact, it is often referred to as a PS4 drive, although its compatibility list includes Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS4, PC, and Mac.
On an initial connection to the PlayStation 4, the system gave an error stating that the disc is incompatible. We tested a separate USB port and got the same result. Even restarting the PlayStation 4 and updating its software (which Silicon Power claims should be 4.5 or higher) hasn’t improved.
This is not an isolated problem. A quick scan of the Amazon page for Game Drive reveals that multiple users are facing the same issue.
However, after testing the disc on other platforms, one final attempt resulted in the PlayStation 4 recognizing the disc and allowing it to be formatted. After a period of tweaking, the game disc worked without problems, although the file transfer rates on the PlayStation 4 were noticeably slow.
Once the games were installed on the Game Drive, we were able to run them directly from the disc to the console itself.
Silicon Power Game Drive ran flawlessly on the Xbox One and allowed even fast-paced games like Burnout Paradise to run without stuttering. Even large files are transferred quickly.
The disk had to be reformatted to work with a PC, but after a quick launch via Disk Utility, it appeared as an option. We moved several gigabytes of data to the drive before removing it from the PC. The Macbook instantly recognized the drive and allowed files to be moved between PC and Macbook.
The drive works well despite a shaky start. For players on a tight budget, this is a good investment.
The Silicon Power Armor A26 Game Drive is designed with USB 3.2 in mind but is backward compatible with USB 3.1, USB 3.0, and USB 2.0. You will of course get the best results when using the USB 3.2 port.
If you’re looking for a way to increase your storage capacity and load more games, this is a decent drive. It has a ton of storage capacity at a relatively low cost. Of course, don’t buy it with the intention of increasing the storage capacity of next-gen consoles: it probably isn’t fast enough for that.
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