The Biwin Black Opal NV7400 is a solid performer with reasonable power efficiency and no real downsides.
Reasons to buy
+
Good all-around performance
+
Efficient and cool-running
+
Up to 4TB single-sided
+
High TBW
Reasons to avoid
-
Pricing and availability
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Looking for a do-anything SSD that won’t break the bank? That’s becoming an increasingly difficult ask, but Biwin has proven itself to be up to the task with drives like the Black Opal NV7400. This is a solid performer that runs cool in a sleek single-sided package. It would be great for your laptop, desktop, or PS5, and since it’s available up to 4TB, you don’t have to compromise on capacity. With SSD pricing and availability becoming so volatile, having another arrow in the quiver – that is, another SSD that’ll work in a pinch – is not something to lightly dismiss, and Biwin has positioned this one well.
We’re working with a DRAM-less drive that has a good controller paired with good flash, even if it’s a different combination than what we normally see. The good news is, we found no real issues with the drive in any of our tests. We do have concerns about pricing and availability – the 4TB SKU in particular will set you back quite a bit – but that’s more about timing than anything else. Under normal conditions, this would be a good drive with no hidden gotchas, so it is a good pickup if you catch a sale or need a drive at the last minute.
The Biwin Black Opal NV7400, or NV7400 for short, supports a wide range of capacities from 512GB to 4TB. At the time of review, pricing was at $146.99, $258.99, and $420.99 for the three largest, but availability is spotty. It’s not too disappointing that the 512GB SKU is unavailable, as it’s slower, and 1TB+ is a more popular target. Prices right now are obscene, so it’s becoming more difficult to gauge them, but these are within the ballpark of what you should expect to pay for comparable hardware. As it stands, there are better deals to be had at all three available capacities, but prices are in constant flux, so do your due diligence.
The drive can hit up to 7,450 / 6,500 MB/s for sequential reads and writes and up to 1,000K / 900K random read and write IOPS. These are good but not exceptional numbers. It’s a good place to be for a PCIe 4.0 drive, and you don’t have to worry about it being underwhelming. The drive has a robust 1000TBW, or 1PBW, of warrantied writes per TB of capacity and is covered for five years. This is excellent write endurance, and if you’re someone who pays attention to that, make a note of this drive.
Biwin Black Opal NV7400 Software and Accessories
Biwin’s software platform is known as Biwin Intelligence, and it’s designed to work with a range of memory products: internal and external SSDs, mini SSDs, and CFexpress cards. It supports multiple functions, including S.M.A.R.T. reading, error scanning, performance testing, data backup, drive cloning, firmware updating, secure erasing, and the conveyance of drive and system information. This all-in-one SSD toolbox tackles everything you want for an SSD, and that could be a selling point if you don’t feel like meddling around with other free or paid software applications.
The NV7400 is a single-sided drive at all capacities, which is a good thing in our book. Single-sided drives have wider compatibility and are usually easier to cool. Some of Biwin’s past partners, such as Acer and HP, also use graphene labels to help spread heat, which works well in this configuration. It’s at least sufficient when the drive is not going to get ridiculously hot.
As we can tell from the label, this drive is designed for up to 3.3V/2.0A, which translates to under 7W. This matches the highest power state, which is pegged at 6.50W, compared to some high-end PCIe 5.0 drives that can get up to 11.5W. This is pretty reasonable, and the drive should operate fine without a heatsink.
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The NV7400 is using the Maxio MAP1602 SSD controller, which we’ve seen dozens of times. The four-channel, DRAM-less controller is powerful and power-efficient. The Lexar NM790 is probably the model for this controller, as it remains a very popular budget drive at capacities up to 4TB. Most commonly, this controller is paired with 232-Layer TLC flash from YMTC, but QLC also pairs well with it in drives like the HP FX700 and TeamGroup MP44Q. In this case, though, we’re looking at Micron flash, which is more unusual. Generally, this flash is interchangeable with the YMTC of the same layer count, and many of the drives we’ve tested in the past could show up with the Micron flash instead, but this is the first time we’re reviewing this combination.
The NAND flash packages are labeled BW29F4T08EMLCHQM. Whenever you see “29” in a flash string, you can be sure it’s something from Intel or Micron from back in the IMFT joint venture days, as this code designates the manufacturer. The rest of the string decodes as “F” for flash, “4T” for 4Tb or 512GB packages, “08” for 8-bit flash, “EM” for TLC flash at four dies per package, “LC” for voltage and B58R, with “HQM” telling us the flash speed and package form factor. Look for our TeamGroup NV5000 review to see a similar breakdown on the Intel side of things.
It’s likely that the most interesting thing about this string for you is the fact that it indicates TLC flash, which is always preferred over QLC. We’ve dug into both 232-Layer Micron and YMTC flash many times in the past, and this review will give us a chance to see how the two products line up when each is paired with the MAP1602 controller.
