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Teamgroup T-Force A440 Lite SSD review: Affordable but underwhelming

Irishu
Teamgroup T-Force A440 Lite SSD review: Affordable but underwhelming

at a glance

Expert Evaluation

Pros

  • Good daily performance
  • affordable
  • Handsome graphene heat spreader

Cons

  • It slowed down early during our 450GB write
  • Low performance compared to other HMB designs

Our decision

The A440 Lite has slightly better synthetic benchmark figures, but was slower than its cheaper G50 cousin in our real-world tests. I recommend the latter as the better budget SSD option.

Price When Examined

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Today’s Best Pricing

To be honest, I expected more from the Teamgroup T-Force A440 Lite. Cardea 440 Pro cousin and partial namesake was a barn burner.

The A440 Lite, on the other hand, has better synthetic benchmark figures than the recently reviewed model and is extremely affordable. T-Force G50it did not match the latter in our real-world transfers.

What are the features of Teamgroup T-Force A440 Lite?

The T-Force A440 Lite is a 2280 (22mm wide, 80mm long), PCIe 4.0 x4, M.2 NVMe SSD with 162-layer TLC NAND using a Phison PS5027-E27 controller. This is a main memory buffer (HMB/DRAM-free) design that relies on the device’s system memory to perform primary caching tasks.

In general, HMB designs, at least modern ones, do well at sequential transfers, but fall slightly behind at random operations compared to DRAM models.

Teamgroup’s A440 Lite is faster in benchmarks than its cheaper G50 cousin, but not enough to warrant the extra expense.

Teamgroup’s A440 Lite is faster in benchmarks than its cheaper G50 cousin, but not enough to warrant the extra expense.
Teamgroup’s A440 Lite is faster in benchmarks than its cheaper G50 cousin, but not enough to warrant the extra expense.

Teamgroup gives a five-year warranty on the A440 Lite; This warranty will be void if you write more than 600 terabytes per 1 TB capacity to the drive. This is what we call the 600 TBW (terabytes writeable) rating.

Further reading: See our summary Best PCIe 4.0 SSDs To learn about competing products.

How much does the A440 Lite cost?

Teamgroup sells the 1TB A440 Lite for $70 and the 2TB capacity for $130. That’s $10 more in every capacity than the recently reviewed G50, but you get better performance in synthetic benchmarks and random operations. However, the G50 set a record for writing our 450GB file; It’s not something to belittled.

The A440 Lite’s nice-looking graphene heat spreader.

The A440 Lite’s nice-looking graphene heat spreader.
The A440 Lite’s nice-looking graphene heat spreader.

A 512GB capacity was listed on our vendor information checkout page, but it was not available or priced as of this writing.

How fast is the A440 Lite?

Unfortunately, the 440 Lite was slower than most of its main memory bus/TLC NAND competition; It ranked 14th out of 21 drivers I’ve tested to date. HMB drives fall into the budget category. This discussion, of course, brings with it the standard disclaimer that all NVMe SSDs are very fast; Here we are basically comparing F1 cars.

However, you can see that the A440 Lite’s CrystalDiskMark 8 numbers, while better than its T-Force G50 cousin, can’t keep up with tougher competition. Kingston NV3 or WD Blue SN5000 — our current best PCIe 4.0 budget pick.

Although the A440 Lite’s CrystalDiskMark 8 numbers were better than its T-Force G50 cousin, it couldn’t keep up with stiff competition from the Kingston NV3 or the WD Blue SN5000, our current best PCIe 4.0 budget pick. Longer sticks are better.

Although the A440 Lite’s CrystalDiskMark 8 numbers were better than its T-Force G50 cousin, it couldn’t keep up with stiff competition from the Kingston NV3 or the WD Blue SN5000, our current best PCIe 4.0 budget pick. Longer sticks are better.
Although the A440 Lite’s CrystalDiskMark 8 numbers were better than its T-Force G50 cousin, it couldn’t keep up with stiff competition from the Kingston NV3 or the WD Blue SN5000, our current best PCIe 4.0 budget pick. Longer sticks are better.

The A440 Lite again outperformed the G50, and in this case even outperformed the other drivers in the first single-row test. Note that most software, including Windows, uses only a single queue.

The A440 Lite again outperformed the G50, and in this case even outperformed the other drivers in the first single-row test. Longer sticks are better.

The A440 Lite again outperformed the G50, and in this case even outperformed the other drivers in the first single-row test. Longer sticks are better.
The A440 Lite again outperformed the G50, and in this case even outperformed the other drivers in the first single-row test. Longer sticks are better.

Although there was no deficiency in our 48 GB transfers, the A440 Lite fell slightly behind its competitors.

Although there was no shortage in our 48 GB transfers, the A440 Lite fell slightly behind all its competitors. Shorter sticks are better.

Although there was no shortage in our 48 GB transfers, the A440 Lite fell slightly behind all its competitors. Shorter sticks are better.
Although there were no shortcomings in our 48 GB transfers, the A440 Lite fell slightly behind all its competitors. Shorter sticks are better.

The 450GB write was the test that got me thinking: “Why pay $10 more for the A440 Lite when the Teamgroup G50 can handle long writes better?” Of course, very few users regularly write 450GB files.

450GB writes showed the T-Force G50 outperforming the A440 Lite. Shorter sticks are better.

450GB writes showed the T-Force G50 outperforming the A440 Lite. Shorter sticks are better.
450GB writes showed the T-Force G50 outperforming the A440 Lite. Shorter sticks are better.

Mid-range performance is our takeaway from our time with the A440 Lite. Not bad, but not great either.

Should you buy the A440 Lite?

Perhaps if you find the A440 Lite at a significantly lower price than its competitors. But the driver just delivers a ho-hum performance overall. In other words, you can probably do better, including with Teamgroup’s own T-Force G50, which is an exceptionally affordable SSD.

How we test

Drive testing currently uses Windows 11, 64-bit running on an X790 (PCIe 4.0/5.0) motherboard/i5-12400 CPU combination with two Kingston Fury 32 GB DDR5 4800 MHz modules (64 GB total memory). Both 20Gbps USB and Thunderbolt 4 are integrated into the rear panel and Intel CPU/GPU graphics are used. The 48GB transfer tests use an ImDisk RAM disk that takes up 58GB of the 64GB total memory. 450 GB file is transferred from one device. 2TB Samsung 990Pro this also runs the operating system.

Each test is performed on a freshly formatted and TRIMed drive for best results. Note that in normal use, performance may decrease as the drive fills up due to less NAND for secondary caching and other factors. This may be less effective on the current SSD series with much faster, last-generation NAND.

Warning: Performance figures shown are only valid for the drive we shipped and capacity tested. SSD performance can and will vary with capacity depending on more or less on-chip read/write operations and the amount of NAND available for secondary caching. Vendors also occasionally replace components. If you notice a big difference between the performance you are experiencing and the performance you are experiencingto Report it, be sure to let us know.