I've been following this thread closely and happened to receive both Polysoft (temporarily) and FANGYUAN so thought I'd chime in with my experience.
TL;DR
Ordered a 8 TB M4 Max back in June but gave up after the 21st November miss. I requested a refund also started the chargeback. Ordered from FANGYUAN instead. The Poylsoft order randomly arrived the day after my Aliexpress one. Tuned out it was the wrong size but Gilles responded with return label and refund within 3 days. The 8TB FANGYUAN SSD is running smoothly.
Polysoft SSD
I ordered a 8 TB for M4 Max using Luke Miani's discount code back in June with the expected 2 month wait. Held on as the production issues occurred and delays mounted because of the discount. Final straw was the November 21st date. Black Friday meant I could get the SSD from FANGYUAN for close to the same price so I messaged Polysoft days before asking for a refund if the package didn't arrive by the 21st and indicating I will make a chargeback otherwise.
Or course, the day came and went with no response, so I initiated a chargeback a week later. Gilles did eventually get back to me on the 2nd of December confirming if I wanted a refund so I said yes and waited. I finally received my Polysoft order on the 12th just after my Aliexpress FANGYUAN on the 11th. Turned out there was only 1 module in to so messaged again asking for a prepaid return label and refund. Surprisingly got a response today with the refund and return label.
Interestingly my Polysoft SSD came with a Wera diver with T6, T8, and T10 bits, so it seems the Minnow is not universal.
Aliexpress FANGYUAN SSD
The box brand was Lynxis, which looks like the brand other Ali stores sell. They come in a nice box but not in any anti-static bags like Polysoft. Tools are also included along with a thin metal pry tool and 'guitar pick.' Unfortunately the pick was too thick so I had to carefully use the metal tool to remove the black ring. No scratches if you're careful. The NAND themselves are labeled Hynix but don't have black underfill like @Den-Fi.
Installation was smooth but I used Polysoft's instructions as the Lynxis one wasn't as detailed. The bottom cover screws were indeed very tight so I ultimately used my own tools. Restore was also simple. Just connected the DFU MacStudio to another Mac and used the Finder to do the restore. Didn't need Apple Configurator 2.
Performance was on par with what everyone else is getting. Amorphous disk mark summarised below. I bought the 512GB MacStudio so it's speeds are after the /
I had been booting from an external SSD while waiting so ran f3write on the new one as full disk write test. Couldn't find a data logger for Mac like HWiNFO so used iostat instead with this command.
This resulted in a log of the write speed in 1 second intervals.
I was quite surprised there were no significant drops in speed as I would expect once the SLC cache runs out. I don't know enough about how f3write writes to disk and this is by no means a rigorous test, so take the results with a grain of salt. f3read showed no corrupt sectors so all good there.
Conclusions
I originally went with Polysoft since they had a successful Kickstarter and offered a 5 year warranty, although as time went on I lost confidence in the ability for them to honour it. I still believe that there was no malicious intent on Polysoft's part, just that they got overwhelmed and had abysmal communication and expectation management. As a Stockholm Apple user, I think things that Gilles and dosdude do is very important. It's promising to see Gilles responding more quickly, at least to me. Ultimately I'm just relieved that I've finally got an SSD installed.
Finally, @gilles_polysoft. I hope that some takeaway from this is that communication is extremely important. No doubt you can see that is a common theme in many of the posts here. I don't need a personalised email, just regular generic updates. While I can't speak for everyone, I understand you're a small business and delays happen for such a niche product. I would be more willing to wait if I had updated information. I hope that others get their orders more quickly from now on and for those thinking about ordering, at this stage, caveat emptor.
TL;DR
Ordered a 8 TB M4 Max back in June but gave up after the 21st November miss. I requested a refund also started the chargeback. Ordered from FANGYUAN instead. The Poylsoft order randomly arrived the day after my Aliexpress one. Tuned out it was the wrong size but Gilles responded with return label and refund within 3 days. The 8TB FANGYUAN SSD is running smoothly.
Polysoft SSD
I ordered a 8 TB for M4 Max using Luke Miani's discount code back in June with the expected 2 month wait. Held on as the production issues occurred and delays mounted because of the discount. Final straw was the November 21st date. Black Friday meant I could get the SSD from FANGYUAN for close to the same price so I messaged Polysoft days before asking for a refund if the package didn't arrive by the 21st and indicating I will make a chargeback otherwise.
Or course, the day came and went with no response, so I initiated a chargeback a week later. Gilles did eventually get back to me on the 2nd of December confirming if I wanted a refund so I said yes and waited. I finally received my Polysoft order on the 12th just after my Aliexpress FANGYUAN on the 11th. Turned out there was only 1 module in to so messaged again asking for a prepaid return label and refund. Surprisingly got a response today with the refund and return label.
Interestingly my Polysoft SSD came with a Wera diver with T6, T8, and T10 bits, so it seems the Minnow is not universal.
Aliexpress FANGYUAN SSD
The box brand was Lynxis, which looks like the brand other Ali stores sell. They come in a nice box but not in any anti-static bags like Polysoft. Tools are also included along with a thin metal pry tool and 'guitar pick.' Unfortunately the pick was too thick so I had to carefully use the metal tool to remove the black ring. No scratches if you're careful. The NAND themselves are labeled Hynix but don't have black underfill like @Den-Fi.
Installation was smooth but I used Polysoft's instructions as the Lynxis one wasn't as detailed. The bottom cover screws were indeed very tight so I ultimately used my own tools. Restore was also simple. Just connected the DFU MacStudio to another Mac and used the Finder to do the restore. Didn't need Apple Configurator 2.
Performance was on par with what everyone else is getting. Amorphous disk mark summarised below. I bought the 512GB MacStudio so it's speeds are after the /
| 4GB Read (MB/s) | 4GB Write (MB/s) | 64GB Read (MB/s) | 64GB Write (MB/s) | |
| SEQ1M QD8 | 7368/6662 | 8462/4143 | 6966 | 7003 |
| SEQ1M QD1 | 4222/3382 | 7489/4143 | 1987 | 3971 |
| RND4K QD64 | 1012/1241 | 261/156 | 584 | 252 |
| RND4K QD1 | 54/62 | 39/39 | 32 | 27 |
I had been booting from an external SSD while waiting so ran f3write on the new one as full disk write test. Couldn't find a data logger for Mac like HWiNFO so used iostat instead with this command.
Code:
iostat -w 1 disk0 2>&1 | tee Output.txtThis resulted in a log of the write speed in 1 second intervals.
I was quite surprised there were no significant drops in speed as I would expect once the SLC cache runs out. I don't know enough about how f3write writes to disk and this is by no means a rigorous test, so take the results with a grain of salt. f3read showed no corrupt sectors so all good there.
Conclusions
I originally went with Polysoft since they had a successful Kickstarter and offered a 5 year warranty, although as time went on I lost confidence in the ability for them to honour it. I still believe that there was no malicious intent on Polysoft's part, just that they got overwhelmed and had abysmal communication and expectation management. As a Stockholm Apple user, I think things that Gilles and dosdude do is very important. It's promising to see Gilles responding more quickly, at least to me. Ultimately I'm just relieved that I've finally got an SSD installed.
Finally, @gilles_polysoft. I hope that some takeaway from this is that communication is extremely important. No doubt you can see that is a common theme in many of the posts here. I don't need a personalised email, just regular generic updates. While I can't speak for everyone, I understand you're a small business and delays happen for such a niche product. I would be more willing to wait if I had updated information. I hope that others get their orders more quickly from now on and for those thinking about ordering, at this stage, caveat emptor.
