Fikwot FX550 2TB NVMe SSD Review: The Budget Speedster We Didn’t Expect

I remember the moment vividly. I was deep into a video editing project, the deadline looming like a storm cloud. My desktop, once a reliable workhorse, was grinding to a halt. The timeline scrubbed like it was wading through treacle, rendering previews took an eternity, and the constant whirring of the old mechanical hard drive was the soundtrack to my rising frustration. Every click was a gamble, every file transfer a test of patience. That bottleneck, the slow, clunky storage, was costing me not just time, but creative momentum. It’s a familiar story for many: a perfectly capable computer held back by outdated storage technology. In a world where instant access is the norm, waiting minutes for a game to load or an application to launch feels like a relic of a bygone era. This is precisely the problem the Fikwot FX550 2TB NVMe SSD aims to solve—a promise of modern speed without the premium price tag.

What to Consider Before Buying a Solid State Drive

A Solid State Drive is more than just an item; it’s a key solution for breathing new life into a sluggish computer. Unlike traditional Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) that rely on spinning platters and a mechanical arm, an SSD uses flash memory, similar to a USB stick, to store data. This means near-instantaneous access times, dramatically faster boot speeds, quicker application loading, and a more responsive system overall. For gamers, it means slashing loading screens. For creators, it means smoother editing and faster file handling. For the everyday user, it translates to a snappier, more enjoyable computing experience, eliminating those frustrating moments of waiting.

The ideal customer for this type of product is someone facing the exact bottleneck I described: PC enthusiasts building a new rig on a budget, laptop owners looking for a significant and easy upgrade, or anyone whose daily workflow is hampered by slow storage. It’s a game-changer for systems still running on an HDD or even an older, slower SATA SSD. However, it might not be the most logical purchase for those who already own a high-end PCIe 4.0 system and demand the absolute fastest speeds possible, or for users of devices like the PS5, which explicitly require a faster PCIe 4.0 drive. For those needing sheer bulk storage for media archives, a larger capacity SATA SSD or even a traditional HDD might still offer better value per gigabyte.

Before investing, consider these crucial points in detail:

• Dimensions & Space: The Fikwot FX550 2TB NVMe SSD uses the M.2 2280 form factor. This means it’s a small stick, 22mm wide and 80mm long. Before buying, you must confirm your motherboard or laptop has a compatible M.2 slot that supports NVMe drives. Check your device’s manual to ensure compatibility and physical space.
• Capacity/Performance: With 2TB of space, this drive offers a generous amount of room for your operating system, key applications, and a hefty game library. Its performance is governed by the PCIe 3.0 x4 interface, with advertised speeds up to 3,500 MB/s. This is leagues faster than any SATA-based drive but slower than the newer PCIe 4.0 and 5.0 standards. It’s crucial to match the drive’s generation to your motherboard’s capabilities to get the expected performance.
• Materials & Durability: This drive uses 3D NAND QLC (Quad-Level Cell) flash memory. QLC allows for greater storage density at a lower cost, but typically has lower endurance (measured in Terabytes Written or TBW) than more expensive TLC (Triple-Level Cell) NAND. The Fikwot FX550 2TB NVMe SSD compensates with a solid 640TBW rating and a 5-year warranty, offering significant peace of mind. The included graphite-coated sticker is designed to help with heat dissipation, which is vital for maintaining performance under load.
• Ease of Use & Maintenance: Installation is physically simple—it just slots into the motherboard—but requires a bit of software setup. As many users discover, the drive won’t appear in ‘My PC’ until it’s initialized and formatted in Windows Disk Management or a similar utility. This is a standard one-time process for any new drive, and once it’s done, the SSD requires no further maintenance.

Keeping these factors in mind, the Fikwot FX550 2TB NVMe SSD stands out in several areas, particularly for its value proposition. You can explore its detailed specifications here.

While the Fikwot FX550 2TB NVMe SSD is an excellent choice, it’s always wise to see how it stacks up against the competition. For a broader look at all the top models, we highly recommend checking out our complete, in-depth guide:

Unboxing the Fikwot FX550: First Impressions and Key Features

In a market dominated by familiar giants, receiving a product from a lesser-known brand like Fikwot always comes with a mix of curiosity and scepticism. The Fikwot FX550 2TB NVMe SSD arrived in a compact, professional-looking retail box with a security seal, a reassuring first touchpoint. Inside, the drive itself was nestled securely. But what immediately caught our attention was the inclusion of a small toolkit. Fikwot provides a miniature screwdriver and the necessary M.2 mounting screw. This is a thoughtful gesture that many premium brands neglect, and it saves you the frantic search for that tiny, easily lost screw. We found this resonated with many users, who praised it as a “nice touch”.

The drive itself is standard M.2 2280 fare, but the top is covered with a graphite-coated composite sticker. This isn’t just for branding; it’s a functional heat spreader designed to help dissipate warmth during operation and prevent thermal throttling. While not as robust as a full metal heatsink, it’s a welcome feature at this price point. The overall impression is one of surprising completeness and practicality, suggesting Fikwot understands the user experience from purchase to installation.

Performance Under the Microscope: A Deep Dive into the FX550

An SSD lives or dies by its performance. A spec sheet can promise the world, but real-world usage is the ultimate test. We put the Fikwot FX550 2TB NVMe SSD through its paces, installing it as both a primary OS drive and a secondary games library to get a comprehensive feel for its capabilities. From the initial setup to intensive daily use, this budget-friendly drive delivered more than a few surprises.

Installation and Setup: A Surprisingly Smooth Start

The physical installation of an M.2 drive is one of the simplest PC upgrades you can perform, and the Fikwot FX550 2TB NVMe SSD was no exception. It slotted neatly into the M.2 port on our test bench motherboard. The included screw and screwdriver, as mentioned, were genuinely helpful. One user noted they used a magnetic tip screwdriver for an even easier process, which is sound advice, but the provided tool is perfectly adequate for the job. Once secured, we booted into the BIOS, which immediately detected the new drive without any issues.

Here, however, is where newcomers often get stuck, a point echoed in several user reviews. Upon booting into Windows, the drive is nowhere to be found in File Explorer. This is normal. We navigated to Windows Disk Management, where the unallocated drive was waiting. A few clicks to initialize the disk, create a new simple volume, and assign it a drive letter, and it was ready to go. The whole process took less than a minute. For those cloning an existing OS, the process would be different, but for adding new storage, it’s remarkably straightforward. The clear instructions included by Fikwot help demystify this step, making the drive accessible even for less experienced builders.

Real-World Speed and Benchmarks: Hitting the Mark?

Fikwot claims sequential read speeds of up to 3,500 MB/s and write speeds up to 2,700 MB/s. These are impressive figures for a PCIe 3.0 drive, sitting right at the upper echelon of what the interface can handle. In our synthetic benchmarks using CrystalDiskMark, we found the drive performed admirably, coming very close to these advertised numbers. We recorded sequential read speeds consistently over 3,400 MB/s and write speeds hovering around 2,650 MB/s. This confirms the drive is well-optimised for its controller and NAND configuration.

But synthetic benchmarks don’t tell the whole story. The real-world impact was where the Fikwot FX550 2TB NVMe SSD truly shined. We installed Windows 11 on the drive, and the boot time dropped to a mere 10 seconds from a cold start. Applications like Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Pro, which used to take their time loading from a SATA SSD, now snapped open almost instantly. The most dramatic improvement, as noted by one user, was in gaming. Loading a large, open-world game like Cyberpunk 2077 or Red Dead Redemption 2 saw loading screens that once lasted over a minute shrink to just 15-20 seconds. This is the tangible, quality-of-life improvement that makes an NVMe upgrade so compelling. While one user reported slightly slower speeds, this is common and can be attributed to different system configurations, such as the motherboard’s chipset or CPU. For the vast majority of users upgrading from older storage, the performance leap will feel monumental.

Thermals, Endurance, and the QLC Question

Performance is nothing without reliability. Two key factors here are thermal management and long-term endurance. The Fikwot FX550 2TB NVMe SSD operates silently and, during our testing, remained cool. Under normal desktop use—browsing, office applications, and light file transfers—the drive idled in the low 40s Celsius, as one happy customer also observed. During a sustained stress test where we transferred over 200GB of data, the temperatures peaked in the low 60s, well within safe operating limits and showing no signs of thermal throttling. The graphite heat spreader seems to do its job effectively, though for systems with poor airflow, pairing it with a motherboard heatsink (as one user wisely did) is always a good idea.

The drive’s use of QLC NAND is a deliberate choice to balance cost and capacity. QLC stores four bits of data per cell, compared to three in TLC or two in MLC. This makes it cheaper to produce large-capacity drives. The trade-off is typically lower endurance and slower sustained write speeds once the drive’s SLC cache is exhausted. For the Fikwot FX550 2TB NVMe SSD, the dynamic SLC cache is quite large. In our large file transfer test, we saw speeds remain high for the first 100GB or so before dropping, but even then, they stayed well above SATA SSD speeds. For the average user or gamer, whose workload consists of short bursts of activity, this drop will rarely, if ever, be noticed. The drive’s endurance is rated at 640 Terabytes Written (TBW). To put that in perspective, you would need to write over 350GB of data to the drive every single day for five years to reach that limit. This, combined with the 5-year warranty, effectively addresses any practical concerns about the longevity of QLC for typical consumer use cases. This drive is built to last through its expected lifecycle with ease.

What Other Users Are Saying

Diving into the collective experience of other buyers, the sentiment surrounding the Fikwot FX550 2TB NVMe SSD is largely positive, centring on its incredible value. One user, who bought two drives during a sale, summed it up perfectly: “very good value.” They, like us, highlighted the inclusion of the screwdriver and screw as a thoughtful bonus and noted that the installation was “fairly easy.” Another user installed it in a new PC build and reported that “loading big demanding games the do load alot quicker over standard ssd drives,” confirming our own findings on its gaming prowess.

The feedback isn’t universally glowing, however, and it’s important to present a balanced view. A small but significant number of users reported catastrophic failures. One stated, “Used only a few times the drive became unrecognised and lost all data,” while another simply said, “Drive worked until it didnt.” While these appear to be outlier cases and could be indicative of a faulty batch, any report of data loss is a serious concern. It underscores the importance of regular backups, regardless of the storage brand or price. These isolated reliability reports are the most significant mark against an otherwise impressive budget offering.

Fikwot FX550 vs. The Competition

The Fikwot FX550 2TB NVMe SSD operates in a fiercely competitive market. While it carves out a strong niche in the budget PCIe 3.0 space, it’s crucial to see how it stacks up against alternatives that cater to different needs and budgets.

1. Ediloca EN705 SSD 2TB PCIe Gen4 M.2 Internal Solid State Drive

The Ediloca EN705 represents the next step up in technology. As a PCIe 4.0 drive, it boasts significantly higher potential speeds, with read rates up to 4,800 MB/s. It also utilizes TLC NAND, which generally offers better endurance and sustained write performance than the QLC found in the Fikwot. This makes the Ediloca EN705 a superior choice for users with a compatible PCIe 4.0 motherboard who want a performance boost and future-proofing. It is also a viable option for PS5 storage expansion, a key area where the Fikwot cannot compete. If your budget can stretch a bit further for more performance, this is a compelling alternative.

2. Lexar NM790 2TB SSD

If the Ediloca is a step up, the Lexar NM790 is a leap into the high-performance tier. This is a top-end PCIe 4.0 drive pushing the limits of the interface with staggering read speeds of up to 7,400 MB/s. It’s designed for enthusiasts, professional content creators, and hardcore gamers who demand the absolute minimum in loading times and the fastest possible file transfers. The Lexar NM790 is in a different performance class altogether. It’s the drive for those building a premium system where budget is secondary to raw speed, making it an alternative for a completely different type of user than the budget-conscious Fikwot buyer.

3. Ediloca ES106 4TB SSD Internal Hard Drive

The Ediloca ES106 takes a completely different approach. It uses the older 2.5″ form factor and the much slower SATA III interface, with speeds topping out around 550 MB/s. So why consider it? Capacity. This drive offers a colossal 4TB of storage, making it an ideal choice for a secondary drive to house a massive game library, media collection, or project archives. It’s for users who prioritize sheer space over speed. While it’s no match for the Fikwot in performance, it’s a perfect companion drive for bulk storage, allowing you to use a faster NVMe like the Fikwot for your OS and most-used applications.

Final Verdict: Is the Fikwot FX550 2TB NVMe SSD a Worthy Upgrade?

After extensive testing and analysis, our verdict on the Fikwot FX550 2TB NVMe SSD is overwhelmingly positive. It achieves exactly what it sets out to do: deliver a massive performance upgrade over older storage formats at a price point that is accessible to almost everyone. The real-world speed boost in boot times, application loading, and gaming is undeniable. Thoughtful additions like the included installation kit and the reassuring 5-year warranty elevate it above many of its budget competitors.

Its weaknesses, namely the inherent limitations of QLC NAND and its PCIe 3.0 interface, are reasonable trade-offs for its price. This isn’t a drive for the bleeding-edge enthusiast chasing benchmark records or for a PS5 upgrade. It is, however, the perfect choice for the vast majority of users: those upgrading a laptop, building a cost-effective gaming PC, or simply looking to inject new life into an aging desktop. It offers an exceptional blend of speed, capacity, and value that is hard to beat.

If you’ve decided the Fikwot FX550 2TB NVMe SSD is the right fit, you can check its current price and purchase it here.