Imagine if AMD or Intel built a processor that could talk, and as the temps ramped up to its thermal limit, it offered words of encouragement. Something like, 'Hell yeah, now you're cooking with Crisco! Keep going!' That would be silly, right? Apacer said 'Hold my beer' and built a solid state drive that communicates that general message, just not verbally.
Its new AS2280P2 Pro Panther SSD is equipped with "battle armor," or a color-changing heatsink that reacts to heat. That's actually an interesting and potentially useful idea, except instead of going from blue to red to let you know that throttling might occur, it changes from "orange to a dazzling golden color when temperature rises, cheering on gamers even more!"
In other words, 'Hell yeah, now you're cooking with Crisco! Keep going!' Only that's the wrong message. I get the intent, but the marketing angle is, quite frankly, a stupid one. I want my storage drives to wick away heat like a boss, not celebrate it like an achievement. The best SSDs for gaming, and especially the best NVMe SSDs, should be able to maintain performance relatively well.
There's more goofiness to the marketing message.
"Gamers may have had the experience of almost being defeated during a battle, but then their characters suddenly leveled up and their HP/MP were instantly filled, the battle situation was reversed all of sudden! Apacer is dedicated to creating unique gaming experiences for gamers, AS2280P2 PRO SSD is equipped with a creative 'battle armor' that changes color with temperature, reproducing the exciting sensation when leveling up during death battles," Apacer says.
Um, no. As heat rises, SSDs actually level down, not up. As in, they throttle to prevent damage, slowing down performance.
For strictly gaming, this doesn't matter a whole lot, not unless your PC's airflow is really, really bad. Apacer's new SSD is an M.2 NVMe drive, so it has performance to spare for things like gaming.
There is no mention of price, but this is presumably an affordable entry in the NVMe space. The specs suggest as much, anyway—it's rated to deliver up to 1,580MB/s of sequential read performance and up to 950MB/s of sequential write performance. That's on the lower side of NVMe territory, and Apacer actually offers a much faster alternative. It's AS2280P4 bumps those sequential read and write speeds up to 3,200MB/s and 2,000MB/s, respectively.
Quirky marketing aside, the new AS2280P2 Pro Panther SSDs will come in 480GB, 240GB, and 120GB capacities. There's no word yet on exactly when they will ship, though.
