Lexar NM790 SSD review

The world of NAND storage is standing on the sting of uncharted territories, with capacities and efficiency prone to develop considerably within the close to future.

With Gen 5 drives taking the efficiency excessive floor however past the finances of many customers, the marketplace for Gen 4 drives is about to warmth up. And if the brand new Lexar NM790 is something to go by, for these within the NAND storage sector, costs are heading down, and the efficiency of even finances drives goes up.

That is all excellent news for the patron, however is that this the fitting time to spend money on a PCIe Gen4 NVMe drive?

Design & construct

• Easy design
• No heatsink choice

We’ve talked about NVMe drive design and the way for essentially the most half, the 2280 M.2 kind issue has all however eradicated what small quantities of variation beforehand existed.

Subsequently, it shouldn’t shock anybody that the NM790 is a fundamental design with the NAND modules and controller on the higher floor, coated solely by a skinny sticker.

The underside has no seen parts in any respect, hinting that the NM790 was designed to be so simple as doable to make and extremely dependable.

Lexar

And not using a heatsink, this design will simply match inside a laptop computer, PC, or PlayStation 5 – although if you wish to use it within the console you’ll should ignore Sony’s recommendation to stay to SSDs with a heatsink.

That is one drive the place you is perhaps prepared to take that probability although: as we’ll discuss later, the ability consumption of this drive is dramatically lower than that of another Gen 4 NVMe drives, and subsequently it doesn’t generate the identical quantity of warmth.

Specs & options

• Caps at 2TB storage
• No {hardware} encyrption

Lexar is producing solely three sizes for the NM790, providing it in 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB fashions. The shortage of a 4TB drive is a disappointment, and we hope Lexar provides this and perhaps an 8TB drive sooner or later.

Getting the utmost efficiency from this drive requires an NVMe 2.0 M.2(2280) slot that helps PCIe Gen 4 x4 operations. It is going to work in a Gen 3 slot, however you received’t expertise the efficiency ranges seen in our testing.

Prior thus far, we’d suggest that these with a PCIe Gen 3 slots purchase drives designed for that interface, however with merchandise just like the NM790, perhaps that recommendation wants updating. As a result of a Gen 4 drive will nonetheless carry out nicely, it has higher potential must you improve your system, and the costs of Gen 3 drives aren’t considerably much less.

Lexar

What this drive has that’s typically higher than older designs is that it helps HMB 3.0 and Dynamic SLC Caching, enabling it to realize and maintain excessive ranges of efficiency utilizing the RAM of the host system and the flexibility to transform NAND to cache reminiscence dynamically.

For these with loads of RAM and many house free on the drive, it’s doable to maintain write speeds for big recordsdata with out exposing the underlying pace of the MLC NAND on the drives to the person. An added bonus for the drive maker is that this avoids utilizing costly DRAM to carry out the caching, which additionally consumes further energy.

What Lexar isn’t discussing is the controller on this drive, however a number of different indicators, like energy use, trace that it won’t be a Phison E18 or a by-product of that design, however one thing created in-house.

After we first encountered Gen 4 drives, the efficiency they supplied was spectacular, however energy consumption and, by extension, warmth era have been typically a problem.

The NM790 reveals how far module design has come previously couple of years because it makes use of virtually half the ability of Lexar’s earlier NM800PRO design with a 6W overhead, requiring solely 3.5W.

To match that energy draw to different well-liked designs, the Samsung 990 Professional 2TB can demand as much as 5.8W, the Kioxia Exceria Professional wants as much as 8.9W, and the Kingston KC3000 2TB desires a worrying 9.9W.

Whereas the quantity of voltage in all these drives isn’t something that customers with a mains-connected desktop system can be involved about, for these with a laptop computer, the NM790 is perhaps an ideal alternative. Or, it could be if it had one function that Lexar selected to go away out.

Mark Pickavance

From what we perceive, this drive doesn’t help {hardware} encryption. Whereas it’s doable to make use of software program to encrypt the contents of the NM790 utilizing instruments like BitLocker, {hardware} encryption is the popular technique for people who need the very best stage of safety.

Safety is among the solely areas the place the NM790 won’t be appropriate for a selected ecosystem, however for almost all of customers who select to not encrypt all the things, it’s one thing of a non-issue.

Efficiency

• As much as 7400MB/s sequential learn
• As much as 6500MB/s sequential write
• Nice longevity

As with many NVMe designs, the makers quote barely completely different speeds throughout the vary of capacities. The 512GB mannequin is just rated for sequential reads of 7200MB/s and sequential writes of as much as 4400MB/s. The place the 1TB and 2TB drives each provide the identical sequential studying at 7400MB/s and sequential writes at 6500MB/s.

Because of this and the comparatively low value of the 1TB drive, we’d keep away from the 512GB choice.

All our testing was carried out on the 2TB drive, and it lived as much as its billing as a really fashionable and efficient NVMe design.

The TBW of those drives scales with capability, providing 500TB on the 512GB drive, 1000TB on the 1TB and 1500TB on the 2TB. I’m unsure why the 2TB drive isn’t rated for 2000TB TBW, however 1500TB is a good lifespan. To place that in perspective, writing the 50GB contents of the Blu-ray drive every day to the 1TB drive ought to be doable for 20,000 days, or almost 55 years. And, even for those who write 1TB every day, the 2TB drive ought to final 5 years or extra earlier than the NAND is exhausted.

Utilizing the 2TB drive for example, the NM790 has a greater TBW than the Samsung 990 Professional, almost double that of the Kioxia Exceria Professional, and solely 100TB lower than the Kingston KC3000.

In efficiency phrases, it’s finest to think about this drive within the context of finances drives just like the Essential P5 Plus and WD Black SN770, because it prices roughly the identical. Nevertheless, in some benchmarks, this drive performs a lot nearer to premium branded merchandise, particularly in “actual world” exams.

Utilizing CrystalDiskMark 8.04, the NM790 could be very aggressive for sequential reads and writes, good at random reads however is down the checklist for random writes. Utilizing the Actual World profile, the NM790 delivers probably the greatest sequential learn performances we’ve seen, and the write efficiency is appropriate.

Utilizing the ATTO Disk Benchmark, learn speeds are on the increased finish of the size, and the write pace is just marginally lower than the premium merchandise. For quite a few causes, the PCMark10 Fast Storage benchmark loves the Samsung 990 Professional, however the NM790 scores increased than the Seagate FireCuda 530.

Our final graph reveals most energy consumption, one thing that may be crucial for laptop computer customers that depend on battery energy. It wins this take a look at by a rustic mile, utilizing solely 3.5W at peak.

General, the outcomes are typically spectacular, contemplating the price of this module, and until you want one thing with ridiculous IOPs or PCIe Gen 5, this can be a sensible choice and nice worth for cash.

Value & availability

Contemplating that there are numerous Gen 4 drives that the NM790 is quicker than, it could be affordable to count on premium pricing, however this drive is shockingly low-cost.

On the time of writing, UK pricing on Amazon for the 512GB model is £44.00, the 1TB mannequin is £64.99, and the 2TB is just £119.99, with comparable choices on eBuyer.

Pricing within the USA is anticipated to be ‘across the similar’ when the NM790 launches there in June.

These costs put the Lexar NVMe in direct competitors with the Essential P5 Plus, WD Black SN770, Seagate FireCuda 530, and Samsung 990 Professional.

Mark Pickavance

It’s less expensive than the Samsung 990 Professional or Seagate FireCuda 530, even when it performs a lot the identical in a desktop system. The WD Black SN770 is cheaper, but it surely solely has a 5150 MB/s learn pace.

The Essential P5 Professional is sort of identically priced to the NM790, however has decrease learn and write speeds and a decrease TBW.

Try our full rating of the most effective SSDs for extra choices.

Verdict

The NM790 design and value level firmly places Lexar alongside the likes of Samsung, Essential, Seagate, and Kingston for providing high-performance NVMe modules with glorious specs.

The place this drive is particularly fascinating is the lowered energy consumption, making it one thing of a no brainer for laptop computer enhancements.

There are solely two disappointments: the primary is the dearth of {hardware} encryption; and the second is the dearth of a 4TB mannequin at launch. Past these two factors, this is a superb alternative for high-speed storage and will work equally nicely inside a PC or a PS5.

Except you might be prepared to attempt a lesser-known model, by way of worth for cash, the Lexar NM790 is a incredible deal, and its specification makes it the apparent alternative for laptop computer upgrades.

Specs

• Interface: NVMe 2.0 M.2(2280) PCIe Gen 4.0 x4
• Velocity: 7400MB/s learn, and 6500MB/s write (on 1TB and 2TB)
• Capacities: 512GB, 1TB, 2TB
• TBW: 500TB (512GB), 1000TB (1TB), 1500TB (2TB)
• Dimensions: 80 x 22 x 2.45 mm
• Weight: 6 g
• Working temperature: 0-70C
• Max energy consumption: 3.5W
• Guarantee/help: restricted 5-year guarantee throughout the scope of the TBW