INTRODUCTION

    As demand for portable gaming consoles increases SSD manufacturers are also doing their part by releasing faster (and in most cases also more durable) storage media (compared to factory/default ones) for them and right now those happen to be M.2 2230 NVMe SSDs. Unfortunately, demanding users who may have their eyes set on high capacities of 4TB and above will have to wait for a while since currently the highest capacity for a single side M.2 2230 SSD is capped at 2TB (dual side models are not compatible with some handhelds). On the other hand, users looking to upgrade to even just 1TB have quite a few solutions available to them and the PLAY model by Lexar is among them.

    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.

    For the PLAY 1TB M.2 2230 NVMe SSD (yes, only one capacity currently available) Lexar chose to go with the quad-channel DRAM-less SM2269XTF PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 (NVMe v1.4) NAND flash controller by Silicon Motion and Micron 176-Layer 3D TLC (B47R) NAND flash (5200MB/s reads - 4700MB/s writes). The Silicon Motion SM2269XTF DRAM-less controller has been used many times in the past and features technologies like 4K LDPC error-correction (ECC), RAID, TRIM, SMART, device sleep (power management), garbage collection and real-time AES-128/256bit encryption (TCG Opal 2.0 compliant). As for warranty Lexar covers the PLAY 1TB with a five-year limited one and regarding endurance they report an MTBF (meantime between failures) of 1.5 million hours and an TBW of 600 for the PLAY 1TB (and yes, these are very good numbers, as expected from 3D TLC NAND flash).