In the sea of storage, it is pretty easy to get lost. I always get questions from friends on what to get to replace their old spinning disk drives. The solution almost always lies with NVMe SSD drives. When picking the NVMe storage devices it always comes down to price vs performance. So our question to fiends is always: “Do you need the cheapest product or best-performing one?” For a general use NVMe I recommend one that has MLC or TLC flash as it is cheaper to the manufacturer and has higher capacities at affordable prices. Lexar is one of the manufacturers that produce NVMe SSD drives. Our review sample is a TLC flash-based SSD NM700 by Lexar. NM700 is an M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 3×4 NVMe 1.3 SSD that promises to deliver high performance for gamers, designers, or video editors.
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[section_title title=Introduction and Specifications]
Technical Specifications
Capacity 256GB, 512GB, 1TB Form Factor M.2 2280 Interface PCIe Gen3x4 Speed 256GB sequential read up to 3500MB/s read, sequential write up to 1200MB/s1 IOPS: up to 200/242K512GB sequential read up to 3500MB/s read, sequential write up to 2000MB/s1 IOPS: up to 332/275K1TB sequential read up to 3500MB/s read, sequential write up to 2000MB/s1 IOPS: up to 293/272K NAND Flash 3D TLC Operating Temperature 0°C to 70°C Storage Temperature -40°C to 85°C Shock Resistant 1500G, duration 0.5ms, Half Sine Wave Vibration Resistant 10~2000Hz, 1.5mm, 20G, 1 Oct/min, 30min/axis(X,Y,Z) TBW 256GB: 150TB, 512GB: 300TB, 1TB: 600TB DWPD 256GB: 0.32, 512GB: 0.32, 1TB: 0.32 MTBF 1,500,000 Hours Dimension (L x W x H) 80 x 22 x 2.25 mm / 3.15” x 0.87” x 0.09” Weight 9g
Our sample came without any packaging. The retail version of NM700 will include a decorative box with all the specifications on it.
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NM700 is 22 mm in width and 80 mm in length. There are no heat-sinks to keep this module cooled. There are two stickers on the module with some information such as the serial number and part number. Our sample is in 1TB capacity however Lexar also makes NM700 in 512 GB and 256 GB.
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The PCB of NM700 has chips only on a single side. Here is the controller, cache, and RAM chips. The performance of NM700 varies based on the capacities. Advertised speed and IOPS vary. The 256 GB module has a sequential read speed of up to 3500 MB/s and sequential write up to 1200 MB/s (up to 200/240K IOPS). 512 GB module has a sequential read speed of up to 3500 MB/s and sequential write up to 2000 MB/s (up to 332/275K IOPS). 1 TB module has a sequential read up to 3500 MB/s and sequential up to 2000 MB/s (up to 293/272K IOPS).
[section_title title=Closer Look at Lexar NM700 M.2 2280 NVMe SSD 1 TB]
Closer Look at Lexar NM700 M.2 2280 NVMe SSD 1 TB
The controller on the NM700 PCB I found is by Marvel 88SS1092-BTB2. This is a high-performance controller designed to take advantage of PCIe 3.0×4 with 4GB/s to the host.
Cache in NM700 is provided by Nanya NT6CL256T32CM-H1. This is a low power DRAM 8 GB chip that operates up to 1866Mbps.
Memory chips in NM700 are by Longsys OUGD8HCM. I wasn’t able to find any relative information on them. Longsys is the company that has acquired Lexar Brand in 2017. So you can say these chips are homebrewed.
[section_title title=Benchmarks]
Benchmarks
System Configuration Component Product Name Provided By Case Open Test Bench CPU Intel Core i7 9700K CPU Cooler Celsius+ S36 Prisma Fractal Design Motherboard EVGA Z390 FTW EVGA Ram (2) 8GB Corsair DDR4-3200 CMW16GX4M2C3200C16 Corsair GPU MSI GeForce RTX™ 2080 Super GAMING X TRIO MSI Monitor BenQ EL2870U 28 inch 4K HDR Gaming Monitor 3840×2160 @ 60 Hz Hard Drives Adata XPG SX8200 PRO (512GB) Adata Power Supply Thermal Take Tough Power RGB 80 Plus Gold 750W
Crystal Disk Mark benchmark at 1GB test size:
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Empty Drive
75% Full Drive
Unlike CrystalDiskMark, the ATTO disk benchmark is a 32-bit compressible data benchmark that measures read and write speeds across various file transfer sizes from 512B to 64MB to show SSD behavior.
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Empty Drive
75% Full Drive
Sequential tests with Crystal Disk Mark with both empty drive and 75% loaded drive were rather impressive. On the bare drive, I saw read speeds up to 3502 MB/s and write speeds up to 1905 MB/s which is pretty close to the advertised speeds. When the drive was loaded up to 75% the sequential speeds dropped but not by much. Sequential read speeds were observed up to 3330 MB/s and write speeds staid pretty much the same at 1913 MB/s.
Looking at the benchmark data from ATTO Disk Benchmark I saw good performance data from both bare drive tests and loaded drive tests. In both cases, you can see cache dips on when the cache was filled up and emptied. This is a normal function of the cache. Under the 75% load, I do see a dip in the write performance with ATTO at around 4MB. I think the data overall looks pretty good for TLC NAND.
[section_title title=Final Thoughts]
Final Thoughts
The Lexar NM700 M.2 NVMe looks good from the performance data of our benchmarks. NM700 is based on TLC NAND flash and is available in 256 GB, 512GB, and 1TB model. Our sample of the NM700 came in 1TB form. Based on Lexar’s datasheet on NM700 1TB I was supposed to get sequential read and write speeds up to 3500/2000 MB/s. In our test lab, I came extremely close to these numbers so as far as the performance goes NM700 operates exactly as advertised.
The price of the Lexar NM700 1TB is spotted around $190. While doing our research I wasn’t able to find many sellers that would offer this NVMe for sale. Amazon only offers 256 and 512 versions of NM700. Lexar also had another NVMe for sale NM610 but at less performance than NM700. The NM610 sells for about $154 and has a performance of up to 2100/1600MB/s Read/Write. So based on our test data NM700 is significantly improved over NM610. I do think that the $190 price is steep. We see a much cheaper solution on the market with the same or better performance for much less. For instance PNY XLR8 CS3030 1TB for $ 130 USD and Sabrent Rocket Q 1TB for $ 120 USD. If you can find NM700 for $130, it would be a good buy. But at higher prices, it would be difficult to justify the value.
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Lexar Professional NM700 M.2 2280 NVMe SSD 1TB Review In the sea of storage, it is pretty easy to get lost. I always get questions from friends on what to get to replace their old spinning disk drives.
