Technology & Positioning
The Acer Predator GM7 is an impressive 4 TB solid-state drive that stands out as the latest high-performance, value-driven option from Acer. It employs the famous MaxioTech MAP1602 controller, which is also found on other popular drives like the Lexar NM790. Acer also relies on YMTC's 232-layer NAND flash, like virtually all the MAP1602-based SSDs. As expected from a value-oriented drive, the GM7 does not include a dedicated DRAM cache, but the controller will use some of the system's memory for the mapping tables. For the Acer Predator GM7 4 TB, the HMB size is 40 MB, the same as Lexar NM790 4 TB and other MAP1602 drives with 2 TB. This is unexpected, normally you'd expect a bigger HMB size on a larger drive, but it seems the MAP1602 is limited to a maximum of 40 MB. This is reflected in some benchmark results, but isn't a big issue overall.

Synthetic Performance
Synthetic performance results of the Acer Predator GM7 are solid, roughly in the upper quarter of our test group, as expected for a MAP1602 TLC drive. In sequential reads we got up to 7.1 GB/s and writes topped out at 6.5 GB/s. With a more realistic queue depth you're still getting almost 5 GB/s, which is pretty fast, too. Just like on other 4 TB MAP1602 drives, 4K random writes are a bit low, which is probably due to the limited HMB size.

Real-Life Performance
Controller vendors have been optimizing their controllers for typical synthetic reviewer workloads on an empty drive. That's why it's important to also include real-life testing. We're even running those tests with the drives filled to 85% capacity, not empty. This approach puts additional pressure on the various algorithms and the SLC cache, just like in real-life. Here the Acer Predator GM7 delivers much more impressive numbers. I'm always excited when I see MAP1602 performance scores, such a good result from a relative newcomer to the controller market, beating top dogs like Phison and others. While there are some swings in benchmarks, the Predator GM7 ends up a tiny bit faster than the 2 TB Lexar NM790, making it the fastest Gen 4 drive in our test group, faster than Samsung 990 Pro, Crucial T500 and Solidigm P44 Pro (by a small margin). The mighty PCIe Gen 5 Corsair MP700 Pro is 3% faster, which isn't a lot, especially considering the drawbacks in terms of power, heat and cost. I think it's also important here to highlight that "DRAM-less" is a category that has a decent bit of variation within it. Performance very much depends on the controller and how it handles that configuration. The MAP1602 is one of the best-optimized controllers for DRAM-less operation, when using it, you'll never notice that it's DRAM-less.

SLC Cache / Sustained Performance
The Acer Predator GM7 uses an SLC cache size of 615 GB (or 45% in SLC mode), the drive can absorb nearly all bursts of write activity. Once the SLC cache is exhausted, transfer rates drop a bit and reach around 2000 MB/s, which is very impressive for a DRAM-less value-drive and much better than most of the competition, which reaches 500 MB/s in that state. Once the drive is almost completely full we do see some drops to 600 MB/s. Nevertheless, filling the whole 4 TB capacity completed at 1533 MB/s, an excellent result that's the fastest in our test group for any DRAM-less drive. Interestingly, compared to the original Lexar NM790 4 TB review, this number is a good deal higher, which suggests some improvements to the firmware were made in that time. At 1.5 GB/s, the Predator GM7 offers sustained write performance comparable to high-end drives with eight flash channels and DRAM.

Power Consumption / Heat
MAP1602 is a very energy efficient design. Compared to the 2 TB version, the 4 TB model consumes a little bit more power, because there are now four NAND chips, instead of two, but the differences are marginal. A very important result for laptop users is that in its lowest power state, the drive goes down to just 0.035 W, which is the fourth-best result in our lineup—longer battery life! The Acer Predator GM7 comes with a preinstalled heatsink, but it's just a thin foil that lacks the mass needed to absorb significant heat. While other vendors opt for metal heatspreaders, Acer appears to use a carbon-based compound, likely graphite. In our testing, this solution delayed throttling by 10 seconds compared to the bare drive, but it wasn't sufficient to prevent throttling entirely; however, a larger Thermalright heatsink was able to completely avoid throttling. Power users should probably install a bigger full-metal heatsink to eliminate throttling during heavy loads. For the vast majority of light consumer scenarios, including gaming, this shouldn't be a problem though.

Pricing & Alternatives
The availability of the Acer Predator SSD is somewhat complicated. It is primarily available on Amazon in Western countries. Currently, it is not officially available in the United States, which explains the unusually high price there, as it ships from a reseller in Japan. In Europe the situation is better. The drive is listed in the UK for GBP 240, including 20% tax, which is approximately $260, and in Germany for €292 with 19% tax, equating to about $267. Given these numbers, I anticipate that a realistic price for the drive in the U.S. market will be around $270 once it becomes officially available there. In China, the drive is listed on JD.com for 1,378 yuan, which is approximately $200, and yes, that price is for the 4 TB version, not the 2 TB.

At our theoretical $270, the Acer Predator GM7 4 TB is similarly priced to the Lexar NM790 ($265). It has to be close, because it's virtually the same drive, using the same controller and NAND flash, like a bunch of other drives. This also means that if availability or pricing is an issue, you should pick one of these alternatives. The most affordable 4 TB SSD right now is the Silicon Power UD90 for $200, but there's no guarantee whether you get a MAP1602 or Phison E21 controller. Still, definitely worth considering at that price point if you just want big M.2 NVMe storage that's "fast enough." Also in that price range are a bunch of QLC drives, the cheapest MAP1602 with TLC is the Team Group MP44 for $232—basically the same drive as the Acer GM7. Kingston's recently-released new value drive, the NV3, is $285—too expensive. WD's SN850X flagship is down to $300 these days, a bit expensive, too, but definitely an option if you think you absolutely must have a drive with DRAM-cache. Crucial T500 4 TB for $310 is worth mentioning, too, I guess, but beyond that, things get too expensive. No doubt, the Samsung 990 Pro is awesome, but 4 TB for $320 is a lot of money when you can have a much more affordable drive that delivers virtually the same user experience. I'd say that right now, the biggest challenge for Acer is to gain a strong foothold globally, in all major markets, with availability from multiple merchants, to establish their storage brand and gain user trust.