Anyone had experience using Fikwot ssd's?

Flippant on 23/10/2024 - 15:22

Silly sounding brand name but their prices are nothing to laugh at.

I've come across these a couple of times on Amazon AU. The deal has changed now but last night they were around $120 for a gen3 2TB m.2 at 3500MB/s, $150 for a 2TB gen4 at 5000MB/s and $185 for a 2TB gen4 at 7350MB/s, which is incredibly cheap compared to almost every other m.2 drive I could find.

Decided to do a bit of digging and from what I could gather from looking online they appear to have been supplying parts for more well known brands for the past 20 years or so and a few years back started producing under their own brand name. Apparently they're very popular in China.

Solid reviews on Amazon and I also found some reviews on Youtube for the Fikwot FN501 Pro from tech channels that went quite in-depth comparing their performance against other drives, looking at the chipsets used etc, doing speed tests on large file transfers, and the results were really good and their impressions were all very positive, though when it comes to smaller tech channels you don't know if the company sent them a better performing model than the retail one or that the channel isn't being overly positive so they keep getting sent more free stuff from the company so I do take what they say with a grain of salt, but they seemed like genuine reviews. This one for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cxfJMGy7UU

I tried Reddit next but everyone on there was just parroting each other with the "don't buy unknown brand ssd's" without any valid reasons why apart from the "might break then what?" argument.

So, anyone have any experience with these? 3 year warranties, solid reviews, incredibly cheap, any reason why I shouldn't pull the trigger next time they're on a flash sale? I'm only going to be storing files on them.

General Discussion

Comments

  • Dunno on 23/10/2024 - 16:00

    Another thing to consider with warranty is you are required to return it to the country of purchase ie AU/US etc at your own cost if its after ~30 days plus pay return shipping(assuming they choose to honour it). Some companies like Samsung US will do so but many won't for export sales so do your research first.

    By the time you have paid that you may be better off buying a name brand locally for $60+ more with a similar warranty.

    • inthiseconomy on 23/10/2024 - 16:34
      +1

      Amazon will normally provide return labels for the product if it's still within the warranty period.

    • Flippant on 23/10/2024 - 16:44
      +1

      Never had to pay for anything I've returned to Amazon AU under warranty.

      • Dunno on 23/10/2024 - 17:07

        How long after purchase was it?

        • Flippant on 23/10/2024 - 17:13

          Had a aio cooler with a 2 year warranty that failed after 14 months, and the other one was a battery charger that I think failed after 6 or 7 months, neither was still available for purchase on Amazon. No issues returning either product, in fact they sent me the return postage ticket to print out and then the day after I booked it in with the post office they refunded me in full.

          I'm sure there are a lot of horror stories out there, but I've had nothing but great experiences dealing with Amazon.

          • kfr23 on 27/10/2024 - 13:14

            @Flippant: The only time I've bought something from Amazon and it was faulty I had to pay full postage costs back to Australia. They wanted express as well, so that cost more, along with it containing a battery, which cost more again.

  • inthiseconomy on 23/10/2024 - 16:47
    +1

    The controllers/NAND used in unknown brand SSDs are still made by big brands like Samsung, Hynix, Silicon Motion, etc… The SSD manufacturers mostly just make the PCB and do quality assurance.

    Yes, they normally use the cheapest parts possible, but they're no worse than budget drives from big brands like Crucial BX500/P3, WD Green, Kingston NV2, etc.

    I wouldn't store anything that I couldn't lose on them, but that's also true for the drives mentioned above.

    From experience, Walram/KingSpec/Netac have basically the same failure rate as other budget drives from manufacturers like TeamGroup, Silicon Power, WD Green.

  • SamwizeGamezy on 24/10/2024 - 12:10

    My recent experience with Seagate has been an eye opening one, 2TB (https://www.seagate.com/au/en/products/external-hard-drives/… ) purchased in March 2023 suddenly stops showing up on any computer, phone and TV. So when I contacted them they wanted me to ship the drive to Hong Kong at my cost then pay the custom fee (this is in their tnc's) if I want my data restored as they will ship 2 drives to me but then I will need to return one back after I've transferred the data also at my cost. The only silver lining (if we can even call it that) here is they will ship me the same drive at no cost for the drive. I checked the shipping to HK and its around $30 x 2 = $60 and I still don't know what custom charges are. New drive same size from Toshiba on Amazon AU is $130 NZD.

    P.S - This is the second drive that is faulted for me from Seagate, the last drive was out of warranty so I never contacted them.

    I have a 3rd drive (iomega 250GB) which was bought 4 years ago and it still works perfectly.

    • Alan6984 on 24/10/2024 - 15:29

      I'd say you might have just been unlucky with the Seagate. I have literally dozens of drives here and at clients (legally theirs, but technically mine in the sense that I look after them), and I have not had a failure for some years now (probably shouldn't tempt fate by saying that!)

      The vast majority have been bought locally (PBTech etc) but some via Amazon AU, and I have no experience of trying to return a drive anything close to recently, so I can't comment on that.

      On the other hand, perhaps I have just been phenomenally lucky!

      • mdsl32 on 25/10/2024 - 19:25

        Most drives i see coming back are external drives or DOA. Failure for desktop drives is really low given how mature the hardware is.
        Wouldn't hesitate buying overseas just make sure to thoroughly test it before putting it into service

        • Alan6984 on 26/10/2024 - 00:25

          We used to get drives that were DoA or failed within, say, a week or so, quite regularly twenty years ago, but I haven't had one personally for some time now, so I'd say you are right about the technology being reliable now. That might not apply to very large drives (I saw an ad for a 32TB drive this week), which might increase the chances of failure - not sure about that, as I haven't had any experience bigger than 16TB to date.

          Every drive should always be properly tested (full writes and reads across the entire disk) before being used - not just ones that have been bought from overseas. Many (possibly most) disks ship with some defects, but if they are just some bad sectors, then the initial testing will help make sure they are all marked as such before anything important is written, and really nothing to be too concerned about.

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