INTRODUCTION

    Even though lately storage media manufacturers have either already released or are about to release new PCIe 5.0 Gen5 M.2 NVMe SSDs the most popular drives currently are PCIe 4.0 Gen4 M.2 NVMe SSDs. Yes, Gen4 models may not be quite as fast as their Gen5 brothers but for most people across all segments of the market speeds up to 7500MB/s are more than plenty and as for both temperatures and durability they usually do significantly better. The NM790 2TB PCIe 4.0 Gen4 M.2 NVMe SSD model by Lexar which i had the chance to review late last year (review here) was a good all-rounder and today with me i have the 4TB with heatsink variant.

   For more than 25 years, Lexar has been a trusted leading global brand of memory solutions. Our award-winning lineup includes memory cards, USB flash drives, card readers, solid-state drives and DRAM. With so many options, it’s easy to find the right Lexar solution to fit your needs. All Lexar product designs undergo extensive testing in the Lexar Quality Labs with more than 1,100 digital devices, to ensure performance, quality, compatibility, and reliability. Lexar products are available worldwide at major retail and e-tail stores. For more information or support, visit www.lexar.com.

   Once again, the NM790 line of PCIe 4.0 Gen4 M.2 NVMe SSDs is currently available in 1/2/4TB capacities with and without a heatsink (both are PS5 compatible) and is yet another model to feature MaXio's DRAM-less MAP1602 12nm quad-channel (R5) NAND flash controller which Lexar has this time paired with 232-layer 3D TLC NAND flash by YMTC (X3 variant - Longsys branded). The MAP1602 12nm quad-channel NAND controller by MaXio packs quite a few features including advanced wear leveling algorithms, Host Memory Buffer (HMB) architecture (uses a fraction of your PC's system memory to cache mapping tables), pseudo SLC cache, bad block management strategy, hardware error-correction, L1.2 ultra-low power state and sudden power-loss protection, TRIM, NCQ, hardware support for AES256/SM4 encryption and support for TCG OPAL2.0. Last but not least Lexar covers the entire NM790 line with a 5-year limited warranty and reports a MTBF of 1.5 million hours for all variants and a TBW (terabytes written) of 1000TB for the 1TB model, 1500 for the 2TB model and 3000 for the 4TB model.