Angelbird

Products

Angelbird's first product, a stackable PCIe SSD named Wings, was released in 2011 but did not make much impact on the SSD market, due to distribution problems in North America and the coincidental release of the OCZ RevoDrive.

Angelbird Crest SSDs, released after Wings, are fitted with an uninterruptible power supply and are responsive to TRIM commands using Apple Macs, the only non-Apple SSDs with these features pre-enabled. They also support the SMART command on Apple Macs.

To draw attention to the Crest SSD's record-breaking speeds, Angelbird sponsored an overclocking event in Austria in December 2012 using the PCMark05 benchmark, using its Crest SSDs. Users from the Austrian overclocking forum o.v.e.r.clockers.at attempted to break the world record, set the night before by US overclockers at 62.759 points. Using an Angelbird Crest SSD, an Intel Core i7 3770K CPU, and cooling components from Noctua, o.v.e.r.clockers members reached 63.665 points and set a new world record at the PCMark05 benchmark.

In December 2012, Angelbird launched its external USB3 SSD2go mobile storage device, the fastest external SSD in the world. Les Tokar of The SSD Review believed this was due to Angelbird's use of ASMedia components, performing in tests at transfer speeds of over 400MB/s for both read and write access. The SSD2Go was released in three models - 120, 240 and 480 GB capacity, with a starting price point of $219 and customisable casing colours. TweakTown granted the SSD2Go an Editor's Choice Award, rating it 95/100 and commenting, "Angelbird has created a work of art that cuts no corners". Deepak Sharma, after bench-testing the SSD2GO 480 GB model, noted that the ability of the product's capacity of 6 Gbit/s was hampered by the USB 3.0 port's 5 Gbit/s limit, and the USB 3.0 interface also prevented TRIM from working, but nonetheless concluded,

"The Angelbird SSD2go 480GB and SSD2go TWIN 480GB (240GB x 2), simply put, are unrivaled. There are no other external SSD USB 3.0 solutions in the market at the moment that can even touch them in terms of raw performance. The benchmark results are absolutely exquisite when considering the interface these are running off of. Achieving close to SATA 3.0 – or 6Gb/s – speeds on a USB 3.0 interface, when considering all of the headroom, encoding and decoding, and the rest of the processes that hinder USB 3.0…it is difficult not to be utterly astounded."

Building on this success, Roman Rabitsch announced the release of a range of products, including the SSD2go Pro, AVpro SSD and AVraw SSD, in September 2013 at the International Broadcasting Convention Conference of that year, targeting professional audio and video producers. The AVraw is specifically designed for professional raw video footage. Red Shark News, a technology publication for professionals in the moving images industry, stated in their review of the AVPro SSD, "It's as if it was designed as a new type of media cartridge that has to last for ages in tough conditions, and be very fast at the same time. It's almost analogous to XDCAM or P2 storage - both designed for rugged, professional use, except that they don't come clad in solid aluminium. When you see it, you realise how inadequate "standard" SSDs are."