SK Hynix Gold S31

Aggressive pricing, at our 1TB tested capacity. On-point in most speed tests for a SATA drive in 2019.

Short company history in consumer market. Lower terabytes written (TBW) rating than competing drives. Minimal supporting software.

Bottom Line: SK Hynix, best known as a supplier of storage and DRAM chips to system makers, lands a solid base hit with its Gold S31. Its debut retail SSD delivers on-point speed and good value per gigabyte for a new SATA drive.

Overall, our first experience with SK Hynix's 3D NAND is positive. There's a bit of room for improvement on performance, but it works well enough for this particular product.

Aggressive pricing, at our 1TB tested capacity. On-point in most speed tests for a SATA drive in 2019.

Short company history in consumer market. Lower terabytes written (TBW) rating than competing drives. Minimal supporting software.

SK Hynix, best known as a supplier of storage and DRAM chips to system makers, lands a solid base hit with its Gold S31. Its debut retail SSD delivers on-point speed and good value per gigabyte for a new SATA drive.

Competitive performance ; Competitive pricing ; Cloning software included ; Five-year warranty

Small write cache capacity ; 1TB maximum capacity

SK Hynix’s Gold S31 is a top SATA SSD pick. With performance figures of up to 560MBps, it trades blows with some of the best and is competitively priced.