Lexar NM790 2TB PCIe Gen4x4 M.2 NVMe SSD Review

A Closer Look

The LExar NNM790 looks, well, just like any other M.2 SSD really. It’s the 2280 form factor, which is about the longest form factor most motherboards support. If you are putting this in a laptop or smaller device, be sure it has a spare 2280 slot, which is to say, 80mm long, as some may be limited to 2260 or even a 2240 slot! For example, the Steam Deck only supports a 2230 or 30mm long drive. However, you’ll be happy to know this drive is supported in the PlayStation 5, so no worrying about the size in that regard.

Surprisingly, despite being their largest 2TB version, the PCB is one-sided, with all the chips on the front, so I guess there’s room for a 4TB version in the future. It uses HMB 3.0 and Dynamic SLC Caching too, rather than DRAM cache, which results in a lower power consumption (and likely less heat output as a result), which will help it reach its 7400 MB/s read and 6500 MB/s write speeds. They also claim it can reach random read speeds of up to 1 million IOPS, so it should be pretty swift in our benchmarks.