Lexar Play 2230 1TB review

pcgamer.com:

The Lexar Play is a fantastic little drive for anyone looking to augment their Steam Deck, ROG Ally, or Legion Go. I've been thoroughly impressed with the performance this drives offers in such a small form factor, which is suited to the cramped NVMe slot in the best handheld gaming PCs. 

Available only in a 1TB capacity, the Lexar Play is best suited to life in a handheld machine and not for housing an enormous library on desktop. You'd be better off with the Lexar NM790 4TB for that sorta job, another drive I really rate from the same manufacturer. The smaller stature of the Play means it's not quite as quick as some larger size 1TB drivers around a similar price point of $85. Though the Lexar Play 2230 delivers impressive speeds versus other stubby storage drives.

We've previously reviewed two other drives intended for use in a handheld machine: the Sabrent Rocket 2230 and the Sabrent Rocket Q4 2230. The Lexar Play is faster (and cheaper) than both. That's in terms of rated speed from the manufacturer and the actual speeds I measured in benchmarking. It's worth noting what slot your device has before pulling the trigger on a 2230 drive like this, however. The Steam Deck and ROG Ally both use that size slot, but the Legion Go requires an adapter to fit a 2230 drive, and others from Ayaneo and OneXPlayer use standard 2280 size SSDs.

The Lexar Play 2230 hit almost exactly the speed claimed by the manufacturer at 5251 MB/s seq. read and 4722 MB/s seq. Write in CrystalDiskMark. For the record, it's rated to 5200 MB/s read and 4700 MB/s. When it comes to random 4K speeds, the Play 2230 is supremely quick at 91 MB/s read and 315 MB/s write.

Capacity: 1TB
Interface: PCIe Gen4 (NVMe)
Size: 2230
NAND: Micron B47R 176-layer TLC
Controller: Silicon Motion SM2269XT
DRAM: None
Seq read (rated): 5200 MB/s
Seq write (rated): 4700 MB/s
Endurance: 600 TBW
Warranty: five-year
Price: $85 | £85

The Silicon Motion SM2269XT controller and Micron B47R 176-layer TLC NAND within this