At a Glance: TeamGroup T-Force Cardea II Review

TeamGroup is sometimes overlooked in the SSD market, but the company has been in business since 1997, and it’s been an active participant in the production of solid state drives for a decade. The company’s new T-Force Cardea II is the latest product in the company’s SSD product line, which is aimed at offering a longer than average lifespan than the average SSD. Let’s take a closer look.

Product Overview

The T-Force Cardea II SSDs utilizes 64-layer 3D TLC NAND, available in capacities that range from 256GB to 1TB. These drives also come with heatsinks pre-installed that are larger than the average M.2 heatsinks; they give these drives a better aesthetic look as well as help improve performance.

The large heatsinks on these drives are also partially responsible for extending the drive’s endurance. The top-end 1TB model that’s priced at $150.99 has a TBW rating of 1,665, whereas the 512GB model that sells for $90.99 has a 800TBW rating.

Benchmarking

Our sister site PCMag tested one of the 512GB models in its lab. TeamGroup reports this model can read information at 3,400MB/s and write data at a slower 2,000MB/s. When tested with Crystal DiskMark 6.0, the drive exceeded expectations while writing data but it feel short while reading information at a speed of 3,127MB/s.

Writing data appears to be a strong point of this drive. In the Crystal DiskMark 6.0 random tests the drive came in second place while writing data, but it’s performance while reading random 4K bits of information was slower than all other tested drives.

Testing with AS-SSD File Transfer test utility showed the drive perform exceptionally well. It beat out all other competing drives when transferring program folders and game folders.

Conclusion

With a large heatsink, strong performance and an excellent endurance rating, the T-Force Cardea II 512GB is clearly a force to be reckoned with. Its price is also competitive and sits close to what many other high-performance 512GB M.2 NVMe SSDs retail for. Overall I’d recommend it as an excellent storage solution.

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