I picked up a barely used M4 Mac mini 16GB/256GB on Ebay for $370 last week on a whim, which I couldn't believe I got for the price. It's literally brand new and barely used. Started researching on Reddit about which SSD is best or most common and found out the few at the top of the list were either sold out or way over priced. Originally I wanted a JCID 10 layer 1TB SSD but they were out of stock from Tempered Store on AliExpress, which was supposed to be one of the trustworthy stores to get genuine JCID boards. so after seeing a few videos and positive things to say about SlimQ, I decided to buy it on Amazon and it arrived next day. it did have fewer reviews when compared to the other SSD's that were rebranded or debranded "Deep Sea" SSD's, but they seemed to have more of a real online presence and warranty so I went with it.
Just wanted to show everyone what I got since a lot of Amazon and Aliexpress photos are AI, digital recreations or stock photos. Saw a lot of the "Deep Sea" branded ones floating around with decent reviews and no real pics of the NAND chips on them.
This 1TB SlimQ is using two KIC 2556 512GB NAND chips, which I believe are Kioxia (Toshiba) and are known to be solid, reliable and stout NAND modules. Upon some further research, seems like they were used in the iPhone 13 as its preferred NAND. I was glad to see that at least. According to a Reddit user who emailed SlimQ, these are 6 layer boards (better than the early 4 layer with possible EMI issues. However, I did notice some lazy soldering on one of the extremely small caps on the board but fortunately, it doesn't affect its operation. I could've reflowed it, but I didn't feel like breaking out my soldering station.
Installation went off without a hitch, DFU restore using my M1 MacBook Air worked fine with Configurator and migration from my 512GB M2 Mac mini over thunderbolt cable worked great without an issue as well. Overall I'm happy to see at least a decent NAND module on the board. first speed tests using Black Magic I was averaging about 2700 MB/s both read and write, peaking to 2900 here and there. gonna keep retesting to see if I can break the 3000 MB/s claims. I guess if anyone is looking for a cheaper SSD upgrade with a 1 year warranty, this is probably the way to go considering the prices and unavailability of the 10 layer boards or the well known M4-SSD branded ones.
Just wanted to show everyone what I got since a lot of Amazon and Aliexpress photos are AI, digital recreations or stock photos. Saw a lot of the "Deep Sea" branded ones floating around with decent reviews and no real pics of the NAND chips on them.
This 1TB SlimQ is using two KIC 2556 512GB NAND chips, which I believe are Kioxia (Toshiba) and are known to be solid, reliable and stout NAND modules. Upon some further research, seems like they were used in the iPhone 13 as its preferred NAND. I was glad to see that at least. According to a Reddit user who emailed SlimQ, these are 6 layer boards (better than the early 4 layer with possible EMI issues. However, I did notice some lazy soldering on one of the extremely small caps on the board but fortunately, it doesn't affect its operation. I could've reflowed it, but I didn't feel like breaking out my soldering station.
Installation went off without a hitch, DFU restore using my M1 MacBook Air worked fine with Configurator and migration from my 512GB M2 Mac mini over thunderbolt cable worked great without an issue as well. Overall I'm happy to see at least a decent NAND module on the board. first speed tests using Black Magic I was averaging about 2700 MB/s both read and write, peaking to 2900 here and there. gonna keep retesting to see if I can break the 3000 MB/s claims. I guess if anyone is looking for a cheaper SSD upgrade with a 1 year warranty, this is probably the way to go considering the prices and unavailability of the 10 layer boards or the well known M4-SSD branded ones.
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