Lexar NM700 1TB M.2 SSD Review

Today we are taking one of Lexar's newer SSDs for a spin around the office for some tests and a nice review. We are looking at the NM700 with 1TB capacity which is the largest in the series. The NM700 is also available with 256GB and 512GB capacity. Lexar NM700 NVMe SSD Lexar built the NM700 with 3D TLC NAND and the Marvell 88SS1092 8-channel controller. The controller supports all the things you'd want from AHCI v1.3 and NVM Express v1.1b to TCG Opal and Marvell’s 3rd-generation LDPC technology. Naturally, it also features low power management which is useful for notebooks and AES-256bit encryption which is useful for everyone. The drive is a standard M.2 2280 which makes it compatible with almost every modern system. It is geared towards enthusiasts such as gamers, designers, and video editors. But everyone can find use in a drive such as this. Performance and Endurance The NM700 by Lexar won't break any speed records, but it comes with pretty good specifications none-the-less. The 1TB version is rated for a sequential performance of up to 3500MB/s when reading and 2000MB/s when writing. The random performance is rated at 293K IOPS when reading and 272K when writing. Those are fairly decent numbers. As far as endurance is concerned, the NM700 series features a 150TBW per 256GB capacity rating. That equals to 600TBW for this 1TB version. In other words, it has a DWPD of 0.32 and an MTBF rating of 1.5 million hours. Lexar backs the drive with a limited 5-year warranty. What Does Have To Say? "Elevate your game with blazing PC performance. Get the most out of your PC’s performance with quicker load times and transfer speeds so you can breeze through your day. The Lexar NM700 M.2 2280 PCIe Gen3x4 NVMe SSD will put you in the driver’s seat with speeds of up to 3500MB/s read and 2000MB/s write" You can read more about the drive and its details on the official product page and series page. Feature Highlights High-speed PCIe Gen3x4 interface: 3500MB/s read and 2000MB/s write – NVMe 1.2M.2 2280 form factorGet 6.5x the speed of a SATA-based SSDIdeal for power users3D NANDFeatures LDPC (Low-Density Parity Check)Shock and vibration resistant with no moving partsFive-year limited warranty Package and Accessories Lexar packs the NM700 in a simple yet beautiful package. The front has the main feature highlights printed on it as well a a photo of the included drive and a sticker with the included capacity at the top. The rear side has a few more details, but not a lot. It is mostly all the legal stuff, certifications needed and things like that which is printed here. Inside the box is a hard-plastic box which protects the drive and makes sure that it arrives in perfect condition at your place. Inside the box is the drive itself along with a small quick-installation guide. Testing & Methodology In a bid to make our testing as thorough and as accurate as possible, we have devised a testing methodology that will give us the maximum amount of data. While this means that testing each drive will take considerably longer – easily up 36 hours – the overall picture that we can gather is bigger too. It helps both you as the reader and us as the reviewer’s to gain a clearer view of the drive’s overall performance, strengths, and weaknesses. It also provides a more accurate analysis of how each drive performs under different conditions. Data Fillage There are many ways to test a storage drive, and we have chosen to include close to every test possible. We will start with a typical benchmark analysis of the formatted drive with various fillage scenarios. However, depending on how a drive is built, the performance may differ depending on how much data it is already storing. For this area, the drive will be tested empty as well as with 25%, 50%, and 75% space usage. We're using Anvil’s Storage Utilities, AS SSD Benchmark, ATTO Benchmark, and CrystalDiskMark for this part of the review. Application and Gaming Besides the synthetic fill tests, the drive is tested with PCMark 8’s storage benchmark to get real-world performance results for various gaming and application usages. Plain Drive Performance Following the fillage tests, the partition gets removed, and we check the drive’s raw performance. These tests will determine the hardware’s capabilities while eliminating any interference from the set file system. AIDA64’s storage benchmark and IOmeter are both great tools for this, and they help us paint an even clearer picture of the drive. Drive Conditioning Durability is a vital factor when it comes to NAND-based drives as the chips only can be rewritten so many times before they’ll stop working properly. Modern SSDs come with wear-level algorithms to increase the lifetime and reduce this factor as much as possible. We also take this into consideration in our reviews even though it would take years to simulate this under real-world conditions. Luckily, Anvil’s Storage Utilities comes with an endurance test that can perform this action much faster, but it is still a time-consuming process. Depending on the hardware, this can easily take several days, and we write thousands and thousands of small files in various sizes and compressibility to drive over and over. Following this conditioning process, all of the previous benchmarks will be run again in the same scenarios and the same order. This will give us a great view of how a drive will perform after prolonged usage, and that is a very vital factor when you pick out your storage drive. The Preparation and In Between The drive will be formatted as NTFS with default settings, as most users will do. The quick format option isn’t used as that might affect the performance the first time data is written. Modern operating systems all take care of the TRIM command in the background and it isn’t something to worry about for regular users. However, for these reviews, I will add a waiting period between each benchmark to make sure that the TRIM command has been fully executed and finished. After all, we want a clear picture of the drive’s performance with minimal interference from the operating system. On each page that follows with the benchmark results, I have inserted result screenshots from the benchmarks, created drive analysis chart for the fill-level performance, and added drive comparison charts where possible. Hardware MSI MEG X570 GodlikeAMD Ryzen 7 3800XASUS ROG Strix RX570Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4 2400MHz (4x8GB)Toshiba OCZ VX500 512GB SSDbe quiet! Dark Power Pro 11 (1200W)Noctua NH-D15SCooler Master HAF XB EVO with Noctua NF-A14 FLX fans Software AIDA64 Storage Benchmark Anvil's Storage UtilitiesAS SSD BenchmarkATTO BenchmarkCrystalDiskMarkIOMeterPCMark 8 Storage BenchmarkWindows 10 AIDA64 Storage Benchmark AIDA64 is a streamlined Windows diagnostic and benchmarking software for home users with a broad range of features to assist in overclocking, hardware error diagnosis, stress testing, and sensor monitoring. The app has unique capabilities to assess the performance of the processor, system memory, and disk drives and is compatible with most Microsoft Windows operating systems. It also has a disk benchmark tool, and that is the one I’ll be using. Fresh Drive The Linear Read and Write tests measure the sequential performance by reading or writing all sectors without skipping any. It gives us a view of the drives overall performance from start to end. The Random Read and Write tests measure the random performance by reading or writing variable-sized data blocks at random locations on the surface of the drive. The Random tests are a combination of both speed and access times as it moves the position before each new operation. The Access Time tests are designed to measure the data access performance by reading or writing small 0.5KB data blocks at random locations on the drive surface. Conditioned Drive The Linear Read and Write tests measure the sequential performance by reading or writing all sectors without skipping any. It gives us a view of the drives overall performance from start to end. The Random Read and Write tests measure the random performance by reading or writing variable-sized data blocks at random locations on the surface of the drive. The Random tests are a combination of both speed and access times as it moves the position before each new operation. The Access time tests are designed to measure the data access performance by reading or writing small 0.5KB data blocks at random locations on the drive surface. Drive Analysis Anvil's Storage Benchmark Anvil’s Storage Utilities is a complete benchmark solution used to test any writeable storage drive. It also has a drive endurance test that consistently reads and writes data to the selected medium to deliver days, months, and potentially even years of use in a shorter period. Fresh Drive Conditioned Drive Drive Analysis With the performance analysis, we get a good view of the drive’s consistency. We want as straight a line as possible for a good result. Drive Comparison For the drive comparison, we will use the performance figures from empty drives here. AS SSD Storage Benchmark The AS SSD software determines the performance of Solid State Drives (SSD). The tool contains five synthetic and three practice tests. The synthetic tests determine the sequential and random read and write performance of the SSD, and they aren’t using the operating system cache. The copy tests are cached and as such not viable results at this time. Fresh Drive Conditioned Drive Drive Analysis With the performance analysis, we get a good view of the drive’s consistency. We want as straight a line as possible for a good result. Drive Comparison For the drive comparison, we will use the performance figures from empty drives here. ATTO Disk Benchmark The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customise your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Fresh Drive Conditioned Drive Drive Analysis With the performance analysis, we get a good view of the drive’s consistency. We want as straight a line as possible for a good result. Drive Comparison For the drive comparison, we will use the performance figures from empty drives here. CrystalDiskMark CrystalDiskMark is a small HDD and SSD benchmark utility that allows you to measure a drive’s sequential and random performance. Fresh Drive Conditioned Drive Drive Analysis With the performance analysis, we get a good view of the drive’s consistency. We want as straight a line as possible for a good result. Drive Comparison For the drive comparison, we will use the performance figures from empty drives here. PCMark 8 Storage Benchmark PCMark 8 Storage benchmark tests the performance of SSDs, HDDs, and SSHD hybrid drives with traces recorded from Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office and a selection of games. You can test any recognised storage device, including local external drives. Unlike synthetic storage tests, the PCMark 8 Storage benchmark highlights real-world performance differences between storage devices. Fresh Drive Conditioned Drive Drive Comparison For the drive comparison, we will use the performance figures from empty drives here. PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark PCMark 10 also features a storage benchmark test now, so it's only fitting that we include this in our reviews too. There are several tests available and I will include both the Full System Drive Benchmark and the Data Drive Benchmark. Fresh Drive Conditioned Drive Drive Comparison For the drive comparison, we will use the performance figures from empty drives here. How Much Does it Cost? The NM700 from Lexar with a capacity of 1TB can be yours for £135.00 at the time of this review. The smaller 256GB and 512GB versions can be yours for £53.60 and £106.44 respectively. I could not find it on the US version of Amazon at the time of this review. They do have other Lexar drives though, so try back later and I'm sure it'll show up. Overview The Lexar NM700 is a classic and all-around drive. Whether you're a creator, sittings hours on hours editing videos, photos, and similar things, or you're a gamer. Your system will like this drive. Office PCs and any other type will equally benefit from the capacity and performance. Granted, it isn't the fastest we have tested, but it does well. It delivers what it promises and it is more than plenty for most people. The M.2 2280 form factor and single-sided design make it compatible with close to any system. Whether it is a portable system such as a laptop or ultrabook, or it's your stationery system: The Lexar NM700 will deliver capacity and performance. Overall, a drive that delivers what it promises, does what it is supposed to, and one that will work for almost every kind of setup. Some might have hoped for an option with higher capacity, but maybe we'll get that down the line. Should I Buy One? Do you like what you've seen and read here? Is it priced to your liking? Then go for it! You can't do much wrong with the Lexar NM700; A solid drive for any occasion. Pros Single-sided M.2 2280 module for compatibilitySolid performanceAvailable from 256GB to 1TB5-Year Warranty Cons Highest capacity option is 1TB "Lexar NM700 is a simple drive, but also a universally usable drive. The single-sided design allows for maximum compatibility while delivering solid performance and up to 1TB capacity." Lexar NM700 1TB M.2 SSD Review Thank you Lexar for providing us with this sample.