INTRODUCTION

   Performance may undeniably be the number 1 reason behind the somewhat recent success/popularity of M.2 NVMe SSDs but their small form factor has certainly also helped quite a bit and so it's no wonder that currently most manufacturers have virtually ceased all development of 2.5" SATA models. On the other hand, SSDs in general are clearly nowhere near to reaching the impressive price/capacity ratio offered by regular mechanical drives and that's something no one expects to change anytime soon. Lexar is among the oldest and most popular manufacturers of portable storage media and even though their acquisition by Longsys back in 2017 was unexpected by many they are still behind many award winning products like the NM610 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD which is here with me today.

   For more than 20 years, Lexar has been a trusted leading global brand of memory solutions. Our award-winning lineup includes memory cards, USB flash drives, card readers, and solid-state drives. 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.

   The NM610 M.2 SSD by Lexar is the successor to their somewhat popular NM600 model and is currently available in 250GB/500GB/1TB capacities. Just like its predecessor the new NM610 model is also based on the DRAM-less SM2263XT 4-channel high-performance PCIe Gen3 x4 NAND flash controller by Silicon Motion which this time over is paired with 64-Layer 3D TLC NAND Flash memory by Intel (the NM600 came with Micron NAND). Just like other models featuring the SM2263XT controller the NM610 also supports the Host Memory Buffer (HMB) architecture which makes up for the lack of DRAM by using a fraction of your PC's system memory to cache mapping tables (remember that this feature is only supported on versions of Windows 10 launched from 2019 and beyond). This allows the 1TB variant of the NM610 to hit data transfer speeds of up to 2100MB/s in reads and 1600MB/s in writes. Of course, just like in the past the NM610 sports various technologies like Silicon Motion's NANDXtend error-correcting code (ECC) with SRAM ECC, end to end data path protection, global wear-levelling, real time AES 256-bit encryption, SHA 256, TRNG, TCG Opal and IEEE-1667 (Microsoft's eDrive). As for endurance/durability numbers Lexar reports an MTBF of 1.500.000 hours for the entire NM610 line along with an 500TBW for the 1TB model, 250TBW for the 500GB model and 125TBW for the 250GB model (warranty is set at 3 years for the entire line).

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

PACKAGING AND CONTENTS

Lexar ships the NM610 line of M.2 NVMe SSDs inside a small box that has a product picture at the front, their logo, NVMe version and the NAND type used.

A few words about the drive are printed in 9 languages at the rear of the box.

Along with the drive Lexar also ships a quick start guide.

THE NM610 1TB

Just like every single M.2 drive to arrive in the lab/office (to date at least) the NM610 follows the typical 2280 form factor (22mm wide and 80mm long).

At the top of the drive we find the SM2263XT NAND flash controller along with four 64 layer 3D TLC NAND flash modules by Intel (256GB each in size).

The other side of the PCB is as expected empty.

SOFTWARE

Lexar also has two pieces of software available for their SSDs (actually three but one is only for the new NM700 model), SSD Dash and DataSafe.

SSD Dash allows you to monitor the status of the drive, access its SMART page and secure erase its contents.

On the other hand, DataSafe does just what its name suggest so with it you can password protect all data in the drive.

TEST BED

TESTING METHODOLOGY

   After over 12 years of testing solid state drives, i’ve concluded that it's almost impossible for any single benchmark suite to accurately measure their performance and that's why in certain benchmark suites we see amazing read/write performance numbers with some drives while in others things are quite different. The reason behind this is that some benchmarking suites are configured to read and write random chunks of data while others read and write constant (sequential) ones. So that's why i always use a very wide selection of benchmarking suites including AIDA64, HD Tach RW, HD Tune Pro, Crystal Disk Mark, Sisoftware Sandra Pro, AS SSD, IOmeter and ATTO. To get the most accurate results each test gets repeated a total of 6 times with the average performance numbers recorded into our charts*. Also, as of February 25th 2015 our results will also include the Storage Networking Industry Association’s (SNIA) IOMeter tests. These tests include a 12 Hour write test used to “simulate” performance degradation over time and a mixed workload test which basically shows what you can expect when using an SSD continuously for roughly two hours. Unfortunately, due to the time required for these tests we repeat them a total of 3 times and not 6 as the above.

   Many people have made inquiries about our charts in the past so once again please do keep in mind that the Charts have the average performance numbers of each drive recorded and not the peak (highest) ones. Also, although every single one of these programs can help potential buyers choose the right drive for their needs you should also remember that from any kind of benchmark up to real world usage the gap is not small (and usually most differences will go unnoticed by most people). All tests were performed in a fresh Windows 10 Pro x64 installation complete with every update up to the date of this review.

* Since November 2018 our SSD comparison charts have been divided to 2.5” and M.2 models to reduce their growing size.

TEST RESULTS - AIDA64 / ATTO

TEST RESULTS - HD TACH RW / HD TUNE PRO

TEST RESULTS - SISOFTWARE SANDRA PRO / CRYSTAL DISK MARK

TEST RESULTS - AS SSD / IOMETER

TEST RESULTS - IOMETER SNIA

CONCLUSION

   Just like with the Mushkin Helix-L and the Silicon Power P34A60 the NM610 may not be able to directly compete with the likes of the KC2000/2500 or the EX950 (because of its DRAM-less SM2263XT controller) for the crown of the fastest M.2 NVMe SSD but it does extremely well and should be plenty for people, especially those looking to get a secondary drive (perhaps for game installation?). Unfortunately, once again i recorded serious throttling during SNIA tests (with the drive hitting just over 75 degrees Celsius) but that’s not something new really and shouldn’t affect any users.

   The current price tag of USD154.95 inside the USA (Amazon.com) and 153.97Euros inside the EU (Amazon.de) for the NM610 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD by Lexar is just a tad higher than what i was honestly expecting. Of course what this means is that if you can climb a bit higher you can get either the NM700 or one of the mentioned drives in this review which are clearly better choices overall (the NM700 should be – review soon). Still I don’t think anyone will be disappointed by the performance of the Lexar NM610 1TB model (as long as they’re using the latest version of Windows 10) which is also why it gets our Golden Award.

PROS

- Very Good Performance (Up To 2550MB/s Read & 1750MB/s Write)
- Endurance (500TBW)
- 3 Years Warranty
- Available Software
- Price (For Some)

CONS

- Thermal Throttling (During Our SNIA Tests)
- Price (For Some)