Published: December 28, 2025 | Source: ADATA | Price: ADATA | Author: Tom Logan

ADATA XPG Mars 980 Blade Gen5 M.2 Review

Conclusion

Such is the consistent performance available from modern SSDs that you have to look at more granular things. With the ADATA XPG Mars 980 Blade M.2 drives they come out swinging in the performance stakes. Again, most drives are quick these days, but the consistency of performance throughout our benchmarks was impressive.

What we also enjoy is the flexibility from having a supplied, but uninstalled, heatsink. We’ve spent enough of our lives peeling heatsinks off of drives to keep our systems looking tidy. By giving us the option to either run it entirely cooled by our motherboards heatsink, or to install one manually – and easily – if we plan on putting it in our console, it makes life so much easier. A big tick in the ADATA box. It’s pleasing to know they’ve learnt the lesson of their Gammix which had a gargantuan heatsink. It fit easily in almost nothing.

Speaking of ease of use, the Silicon Motion SM2508 controller at the heart of the Mars 980 Blades combines plentiful speed with great power efficiency. A very good way to upgrade your laptop without causing your battery life to plunge into an abyss. It might not be the absolute speed king, but it fits very nicely into the upper echelons whilst remaining affordable.

Providing a big storage upgrade for any gaming setup, be it console or PC, without breaking the bank, the ADATA XPG Mars 980 Blade gives great value for money and good performance. The flexible heatsink setup is a feather in it’s cap, and the 5 year warranty lets you game without worry.