Lexar’s 2019 SSD Lineup Explored: NVMe, SATA, and USB-C Drives

Lexar’s 2019 SSD Lineup

NM600 NVMe, NS200 SATA, and SL100 Pro USB Type-C

Lexar is a name known to anyone who has shopped for removable storage over the years, being a fixture in the memory card space in particular until then-parent company Micron announced the end of the business in mid-2017. Micron was seeking a buyer, and they found one in Longsys, which acquired the Lexar brand later that year.

With the brand reborn and a full lineup of products which include memory cards, USB flash drives, and both internal and external SSDs, Lexar isn’t going anywhere. And while I have experience with Lexar’s memory cards and USB JumpDrive lineup (I still use the P20 reviewed here), I had yet to check out their SSDs. Until now.

Lexar NM600 NVMe SSD

We received the 480 GB version of the NM600, a PCIe Gen3 x4 drive with rated sequential performance of up to 2100MB/s read and 1600MB/s write. These speeds are obviously not reaching the limits of what this interface can provide, but are in line with value-oriented NVMe options and similar to a drive such as Mushkin’s Helix-L, while being quite a bit higher than Intel’s 660p.

The NM600 makes use of Silicon Motion’s SM2263XT controller, a DRAM-less design using Host Memory Buffer architecture or HMB (link opens a PDF). The drive uses Micron 3D TLC NAND which helps provide better performance than what we have seen from low-cost QLC drives.

Performance testing was carried out on a new ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Hero Wi-Fi motherboard using an AMD Ryzen 9 3900X processor, with the system running Windows 10 1903 and the latest drivers.

At higher queue depths the Lexar NM600 performs up to its rated specifications, coming in just shy of its advertised 2100 MB/s read speeds and exceeding its rated 1600 MB/s writes. 4K random results place the NM600 just above the MyDigitalSSD SBX, with considerably higher 4K random read performance than a Crucial P1 or Intel 660p at the default Q8T8 setting in CrystalDiskMark.

Lexar NS200 SATA SSD

Lexar’s NS200 is a 2.5-inch SATA drive, and our 480GB version sits in the middle of the lineup with 240GB and 960GB versions also available. This particular drive offers rated sequential performance of up to 550MB/s read and 510MB/s write.

The NS200 uses Silicon Motion’s SM2258H controller, and its Micron 3D TLC NAND is coupled with 512MB of SK Hynix DRAM. These specs bode well for its performance, and are quite similar to those found in the Crucial MX500 SSD.

As with the NM600 above, benchmark results come from an ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Hero Wi-Fi motherboard with an AMD Ryzen 9 3900X processor running Windows 10 1903.

As you can see from the basic benchmark results in the gallery above the Lexar NS200 offers good SATA performance, hitting its rated read speed at QD32, though its write speeds did not hit the theoretical 510MB/s sequential, offering instead up to about 480MB/s (QD32). Performance naturally scales down at lower queue depths, with the lower limit visible in the ATTO QD1 test result.

Lexar SL100 Pro USB Type-C SSD

Lexar’s SL100 Pro is a small external SSD that connects via USB 3.1 with both Type-C and Type-B cables in the box. The full potential of the drive requires the 10Gbps connection of USB 3.1 Gen2, and speeds of up to 950MB/s read and 900MB/s write are advertised.

The enclosure weighs 2.5 oz and has a smaller footprint than a credit card (about the same size as my Samsung T3 drive), with a thickness of less than half an inch (2.165 x 2.89 x 0.425 inches). It has a nice build quality with a brushed aluminum exterior, and Lexar provides DataVault Lite software on the drive for encrypting your files if you choose to use it.

The Lexar SL100 Pro was connected via USB 3.1 Gen2 with benchmark results coming from a 2019 HP Spectre x360 2-in-1 notebook running Windows 10 1809.

Results show the drive hitting the rated 950 MB/s read speed almost exactly, with the QD4 ATTO result topping out at 952.56 MB/s. Writes were short of the mark, with results not reaching 900 MB/s, topping out at just under 850 MB/s in our testing. The initial write numbers under Windows may seem to be well over 1 GB/s, but OS caching is at play and speeds soon settle to sub-800 MB/s numbers over larger transfers.

Pricing and Conclusion

The 2019 Lexar SSD lineup offers good performance, but in the competitive storage landscape we have to look at pricing here in the USA to make a determination about these drives. To this end we checked out the current prices on Amazon.com:

• NM600 NVMe PCIe Gen3 x4 SSD, 480GB: Currently listed on Amazon.com for $64.99, which is $5 above the price of the similar Crucial P1 and Intel’s popular low-cost 660p 512GB.
• NS200 SATA SSD, 480GB: Currently listed on Amazon.com for $53.99, placing it $6 below the Crucial MX500 drive it shares a controller with.
• SL100 Pro, 500GB: Currently listed on Amazon.com for $143.28, placing it well below the $189 asking price of SanDisk’s new Extreme Pro 500GB (with very few portable SSDs offering full 10 Gbps speeds currently).

Pricing seems fair, with the NM600 offering just a bit higher read performance on paper vs. the Crucial P1 for its $5 premium. NVMe drives are getting less expensive, and I like the trend of cheaper TLC options after seeing some pretty low numbers from budget QLC drives. The SATA NS200 is a solid performer that is a bit less expensive than its Crucial counterpart as well, so no complaints there.

As to the SL100 Pro, this rugged little drive is still quite capable even though it did not quite hit its rated write speeds. The market for such drives is very limited right now, with many of the USB 3.1 SSDs actually only providing Gen 1 speeds (Samsung’s T5 is rated at up to 540 MB/s, for example).

I would personally lean toward pairing a drive like Lexar’s NM600 with the Orico NVMe enclosure I tested earlier this year, which at the current $42.99 pricing of the Orico enclosure would be a total investment of 107.98, representing of course a large discount compared to the SL100 Pro – though without any encryption software.

In any case it’s nice to see another player in the SSD market. Lexar lives on as a solid option in the storage space, just like the old days.