How Much Does it Cost?
Unfortunately, at the time of writing, I couldn’t see active stock of the drive here in the UK, but only an eBay listing for the US with a price of $78.98. Of course, we will endeavour to update this as soon as possible. However, you can check the official Apacer store on Amazon UK for up-to-date stock and prices here.
Overview
The Apacer AS2280 Q4L PCIe Gen4 1TB M.2 SSD was never designed to be the fastest or even one of the best SSDs on the market, and honestly, it doesn’t have to be. Apacer has kept the focus on low cost here, and while that can often mean a “cheap” product, the Q4L retains all the good quality features one would expect from such a respected brand name. Really, the latest part of the cost reduction here is using the last-gen PCIe 4×4 interface and lower-speed chips.
Gen4 drives are capable of up to 7000-ish MB/s read and write, and this is really about half of that, with promised performance of up to 3600 MB/s read and 3000 MB/s write. However, from my own testing, we actually got 3660 MB/s read and 3276 MB/s write, so while it sets the bar respectfully low, it did manage to exceed those figures, which is certainly no bad thing.
While gamers will want faster loading times, the fastest drives can be prohibitively expensive. While this drive is undoubtedly going to be under $100 when you find stock, you’re still getting performance that’s roughly 7-8x that of a more traditional SATA SSD and around 30x faster than the best HDDs, making it an appealing upgrade path for those still running older storage formats.
Should I Buy One?
The Apacer AS2280 Q4L PCIe Gen4 1TB M.2 SSD offers a respectable low-cost option for those looking for affordable, reliable and highly compatible storage to upgrade their laptop or PC. While not the fastest Gen4 drive on the market, that is going to be reflected in the price, and with capacities of up to 2TB, they’ll offer up more than enough storage space for those looking to boost their gaming PC or office computer, with speeds that are 7-8x that of older 2.5″ SSDs. If you’re looking for an entry point to M.2 storage, this only costs around $20 more than a SATA drive would but brings huge performance gains that can’t be ignored.
