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.

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.

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.