Introduction

Lexar has made a name for itself in the portable storage market—they are very well known for their SD cards and USB drives, so it’s natural for them to expand into other areas of flash storage, like consumer SSDs. Lexar was founded as a subsidiary of Micron, but was sold to Longsys in 2017 and has been operating quite independently since.

Today, we’re reviewing the Lexar NM710 1 TB, the latest PCI-Express 4.0 M.2 NVMe SSD introduced by the company as their new entry-level option. Just like the NM790 that we reviewed a few weeks ago, the NM710 is based on the Maxiotech MAP1602 controller paired with YTMC 3D TLC NAND flash. Unlike the NM790, which uses the newer 232-layer NAND, the NM710 is built with the slightly older and more affordable 128-layer X2-9060 TLC flash. A DRAM cache chip is not included, just like on other MAP1602 designs, to help achieve the highly competitive price point of $89 for 2 TB (yes, 2 TB, not 1 TB).

The Lexar NM710 is available in capacities of 512 GB ($33), 1 TB ($47) and 2 TB ($89) . Endurance for these models is set to 300 TBW, 600 TBW and 1200 TBW, respectively. Lexar includes a five-year warranty with the NM710.