What Is a Good AS SSD Score? Judge Yours the Reliable Way
It is the first question everyone asks after a run: is this score good? The honest answer is that there is no universal scale to check it against — and any page that hands you a tidy score range for an entire class of drives, without showing where the numbers came from, is guessing. A total score depends on the drive model, its capacity, the AS SSD version, the test size, the driver mode and the host system. This guide takes the only approach that actually works: compare your result, row by row, with a published professional review of the same drive. Run the test from our download page, then work through the method below.
Step 1: Find a review of your exact drive
Search for your drive’s exact model and capacity plus “AS SSD” — capacity matters, because larger models often write faster than smaller ones in the same family, and reviewers test specific capacities. Review sites such as Legit Reviews, KitGuru and TweakTown have published AS SSD results for hundreds of drives over the years. You want a review that prints the sequential and 4K rows and the total, and ideally states the AS SSD version used. Our own archive in AS SSD scores compared collects verified examples with their sources, and it is a good starting point.
Step 2: Match the test conditions before comparing anything
Two results are only comparable when the conditions match. Check three things. Version: a score from AS SSD 1.7 and a score from 2.0 are not on the same scale. Test size: the 1 GB default is what most reviews use; a 10 GB run on your machine will not line up with a 1 GB review run. Display mode: make sure you are reading MB/s, not IOPS — switch with the View menu if needed, as explained in MB/s vs IOPS explained. If the conditions differ, the comparison is void; change your settings and re-run instead of explaining the gap away.
Step 3: Compare rows, not just the total
The total is a weighted summary that mostly reflects 4K performance (see the score formula), so two drives can reach similar totals by different routes. Compare your Seq and 4K rows with the review’s rows individually. Small run-to-run variation is normal — a few percent either way on any row means “in line with the review”. One row collapsing while the others hold up is a diagnostic clue: a weak 4K-64Thrd row points at driver mode, a weak sequential write row on a nearly full drive points at the drive’s write cache or free space, and a bad alignment flag in the top strip can depress everything at once.
Four real reference points, with sources
To show what “in line with a review” looks like, here are four published results — each one a specific drive, tested by a named site, with the version noted where the review states it. None of these is a range or an estimate; each is the result that outlet actually recorded.
Samsung 870 EVO 500 GB (SATA) — RelaxedTech recorded a total score of 1,242, with sequential speeds of 558 MB/s read and 549 MB/s write. If your 870 EVO 500 GB lands near those rows under the same settings, it is performing as reviewed.
Crucial BX200 480 GB (SATA) — Legit Reviews (AS SSD 1.8.5636.37293) recorded sequential speeds of 520 MB/s read and 461 MB/s write and a total of 1,041. Note the older version: compare your BX200 run against this only with the version difference in mind.
Intel SSD 660p 1 TB (NVMe) — Legit Reviews (AS SSD 2.0.6485.19676) recorded sequential speeds of 1,747.2 MB/s read and 1,681.9 MB/s write, 4K results of 54 MB/s read and 136 MB/s write, and a total of 2,433.
Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500 GB (NVMe) — RelaxedTech recorded sequential speeds of 3,503 MB/s read and 3,285 MB/s write and a total of 4,931 — on the same test bench where the SATA 870 EVO above scored 1,242, which is why same-bench review comparisons are so much more trustworthy than numbers gathered from different systems.
What a “bad” result usually means
When a drive scores far below its own review results under matched conditions, the cause is far more often the setup than the silicon. The usual suspects, in the order we check them: the drive running under a legacy IDE-mode driver instead of AHCI or NVMe; a misaligned partition (AS SSD prints the alignment in the top strip); the drive installed in a slower slot or port than it was reviewed in; a nearly full drive whose write cache has no room to work; and thermal throttling on an M.2 drive under a long test. Work through those before concluding the drive itself is at fault — our troubleshooting cluster covers each of them.
The bottom line
“Good” is not a number — it is a match. A good AS SSD score is one that lines up, row by row, with what a competent review measured from the same drive under the same version and test size. Anything else — forum screenshots without context, class-wide ranges with no sources, scores from a different benchmark version — will either worry you needlessly or reassure you wrongly. If you are shopping on the strength of benchmark evidence, start from drives with strong published results; our best NVMe SSDs guide collects current options, and how to read AS SSD scores will help you read the evidence behind any of them.