Don’t Buy Scammy $100 16TB SSDs on Amazon
There are prices that seem “too expensive to be true” and there are very good prices that must be fake. A portable external 16 TB SSD under $120 is definitely the latter.
Before getting optimistic about the storage deal, ReviewGeek bought one of these drives and published a teardownIn this teardown, we found that what was claimed to be a “16TB USB 3.1 M.2 SSD” was actually a 64GB USB 2.0 micro SD card mounted on a circuit board that acted as a USB adapter. . A fake, so to speak. (It didn’t seem to contain any malware, though, so it’s…something.) I’ve seen good 64GB cards. As low as $11 at Amazon (opens in new tab).
If you’re expecting Amazon to win this one, it’s not. Type “16TB SSD” into Amazon today and you’ll get at least 15 listings of portable external 16TB SSDs priced from $63 to $120. To put this incredible pricing into context, a $120 16 TB SSD equates to about three-quarters of a cent ($0.0075) per GB. A month ago, his BackBlaze, a cloud storage provider, HDD storage will drop to 1 cent ($0.01) per GB by 2025. yes, hard drive depository — So a 16 TB HDD in 2025 will cost about $40 more than these supposed 16 TB SSDs in 2023.
Here’s the thing: Minus the insane pricing, these 16 TB SSD listings don’t necessarily look fake at first glance. Indeed, they all feature the same picture of the ultra-common aluminum casing and are all sold by companies whose names seem to be taken from random CAPTCHAs.
But it doesn’t always look like a scam. Some things look real if you’re not careful. For one, they are most often listed as “shipped from” by Amazon.The label should inspire security for buyers, as it means the product ships directly from Amazon’s warehouse. have a productUnfortunately, that’s all it means. Amazon may technically own this product, but clearly is not (or is not) responsible for what it is.
Another thing that makes these listings look more legitimate is their ratings. Most listings have decent star ratings with double digit reviews. Something with a low star rating but hundreds of reviews doesn’t look like an outright scam, but rather a cheap and shoddy product (which many people are happy to accept).
However, when I actually read the reviews, I find it suspicious. Many of them are clearly not about lists. In the reviews I looked up for these SSDs, I saw people talking about everything from blankets to bracelets to webcams to home decor.
This is the result of malicious sellers abusing Amazon’s review integration feature. Amazon allows sellers to update listings with new products while maintaining reviews for existing listings. This is to allow sellers to add variations to their product pages as long as they are essentially the same product. New colors, sizes, or even small upgrades are possible. .
you’re not assumption You could update the product page with a completely different product, but you can. The seller builds review trust on the product listing page and leverages the star rating and number of reviews on that page by constantly swapping random products. Usually having enough reviews would reveal discrepancies, but that’s not the case. that Amazon buyers can give star ratings to items without writing a review. Also, they are not necessarily the most detailed reviewers. Many of the reviews are very short or generic (such as “great color” or “I love it”). another product.
This kind of fraudulent “review consolidation” is against Amazon’s policy of course, but these sellers don’t seem to care and Amazon can’t shut them out any time soon. These 16 TB SSDs have been around for a while. Own Corif tom’s hardware forum Pointing out some of these scam lists in August 2022, TechRadar Focuses on Trends Black Friday in November 2022. Amazon has since removed those listings, as well as the listings of products ReviewGeek has purchased.
Amazon also issued a statement in response to ReviewGeek’s recent withdrawal, detailing its policy on review consolidation.
“We do not allow product listing hijacking, posting inaccurate information, and do not tolerate false reviews. We are suspending, banning, and taking legal action against and removing unauthentic reviews.The item in question violates our policy and has been removed.”
I searched Amazon for 16 TB SSD again and 8 out of the first 10 results were a scam.
Amazon can’t figure out how to fix this, so do a little more digging before you impulse buy storage (if the price makes you want to impulse buy, that could be a sign). Read the reviews and don’t trust Amazon. Because Amazon ships anything from its warehouse.
If you’ve read all of this and really want a portable external 16TB SSD, you can find one here. List of the best external SSDs and hard drives. of 16TB Sable Rocket XTRM-Q It features RAID capabilities and sequential read speeds up to 1.4GBps (2.8GBps with Thunderbolt 3).Normally sold for just under $3,000, now Available on Amazon for $2,400 (opens in new tab).