Introduction

Acer is a world-leading manufacturer of computer hardware. The company was founded in Taiwan in 1976, and is mostly known for their laptops, desktop PCs, and monitors. BIWIN Storage has been granted an official license by Acer to produce, market and sell solid-state-drives using their name.



In today's review we are taking a look at the Acer MA200, which is a highly compact solid-state-drive for the M.2 2230 form factor, with a mere 30 mm length. Its compact size makes it a perfect match for the Valve Steam Deck. Moreover, the MA200 is an option for expanding the storage on various other game consoles, like the ASUS ROG Ally, MSI Claw and of course several Microsoft Surface Pro devices. The drive will also fit into cases where a full-size M.2 2242 PCIe drive has to be used.

In the past I've tested several drives with that form factor, most of them using the Phison E21 controller. The MA200 in today's review is different, it's built using the Silicon Motion SM2269XT controller, paired with Micron 176-layer 3D TLC NAND flash. This is another major difference to many competing drives on the market: Acer is using TLC, while most others are using slower and cheaper QLC. As expected, a DRAM cache chip is absent due to space limitations. The drive interfaces with the rest of the system through the PCI-Express 4.0 interface.

The Acer MA200 is available in capacities of 512 GB and 1 TB, unfortunately there is no 2 TB, or even 4 TB model. While the drive isn't available in the USA, it can be found in Europe at a price of €90 for the 1 TB variant, including 20% VAT, which converts to $85.

The endurance is set to 300 TBW and 600 TBW respectively. Acer includes a five-year warranty with the MA200 SSD.