The TBW write endurance is a particular highlight of the Samsung 980 Pro, especially in these latter two configurations, as there's a rating of 600TB and 1200TB respectively. There's no chance of slowing down or degradation over the years, and with a 5-year warranty, you've got peace of mind knowing it'll keep up for the long haul. The downside is its durability. The 970 EVO Plus has the lowest durability as measured by MTBF, rating only 1,500,000 hours, and its TBW rating at 2TB is 1200, matching the SN750, but lagging the XPG SX8200. At 256GB, it scores a rather low 150, the lowest of the three PCIe 3.0 contenders. However, the 990 Pro comes with its caveats. Its current limited capacity options might deter some, though we anticipate more choices soon. Additionally, while its price matches high-performance PS5 SSDs, it sits higher than budget-friendly SSDs like the Adata XPG SX8200. Those strictly budget-focused might consider the more affordable Samsung 980 or 970 Evo.

The Patriot Viper VP4300 is a major contender for the best SSD crown with its impressive sequential and random speeds, fast copy operations, and low operating temperature. But most of all, this SSD is built for the long haul with a best-in-class 1000TBW endurance rating for a 1TB drive, and a 2000TBW rating for a 2TB one.

HP FX900 PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD

Hard drive retention: Hard drive retention is not available on models with a soldered hard drive, including XPS 9315 2in1, Chromebooks or Venue tablets, except the Venue 11 Pro. Compared to Gen5 SSD performance without DirectStorage, based on internal test results with supported GPU that uses GPU decompression.

At the core, an SSD is just a thin circuit board studded with flash-memory and controller chips. Why not design around that? Thus the M.2 form factor was born. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Our tests reflect this for the most part, recording a sequential read speed of 7,256MB/s in CrystalDiskMark 8, with a somewhat lower than expected sequential write speed of 6,082MB/s in the same test. Interestingly though, it had the highest random write performance of any drive we tested (4,938MB/s), including the vaunted Samsung Pro 990, which had a roughly 17% slower random write rate (4,105MB/s). It also had the best average data copy rate of all the drives we tested recently with 1,733MB/s, so this is not only a great gaming SSD, it’s a fantastic all around performer at a great price. Early examples of the latest generation of M.2 drives, using the PCI Express 5.0 bus, also come in the Type-2280 format, but it's expected that some PCIe 5.0 slots on new motherboards will be built to support the larger Type-25110 format (25mm by 110mm), so we may well see PCIe 5.0 SSDs with these dimensions as well. PCIe 5 drives are capable of tremendous throughput speeds (in excess of 10,000MBps) that should generate abundant heat, and the SSDs we have seen so far come with substantial built-in heatsinks.The Samsung 990 Pro maxes out what's possible with NVMe Gen 4.0 technology in a way that few other SSDs for PS5 can say. Available in either 1TB or 2TB configurations, this high-speed and high-end drive is seriously impressive across the board when compared to the competition. A standout feature: the 990 Pro's sequential writes significantly outpace both its predecessor and competitors. Additionally, it showcases impressive read speeds, nearing PCIe 4.0's maximum of 8,000MB/s. In our testing, we found that the Corsair MP600 Pro LPX certainly lived up to its ambitions, scoring 7,364 MB/s reads and 6,870 MB/s. There are few models that can say the same, especially at the price point that the company's flagship drive retails for. M.2 drive length isn't always an indicator of drive capacity, but there are limits to NAND-chip density and how many memory modules engineers can stuff onto a PCB of a given size. As a result, most of the M.2 drives we've seen to date have topped out at 2TB, though you can find a few 4TB and 8TB models at lofty prices. The typical capacity waypoints are as follows: Typical I/O performance as measured using CrystalDiskMark® with a queue depth of 512 and write cache enabled. Windows 11 Core isolation disabled for performance measurement. Fresh out-of-box (FOB) state is assumed. For performance measurement purposes, the SSD may be restored to FOB state using the secure erase command. System variations will affect measured results.

The market has settled on 22mm wide as the standard for desktop and laptop implementations; the aftermarket drives available and the accessible slots we've seen have all been that width. The most common lengths we've seen are 80mm ("Type-2280") and 60mm ("Type-2260"). The lengthier the drive, the more NAND chips you can tend to stuff on it (plus, M.2 drives can be single- or double-sided), though know that length isn't an absolute measure of capacity. 42mm, 60mm, and 80mm M.2 SSDs

Lexar NM790

Finally, we use the drive as our primary SSD in our workstation PC (and video game console, if appropriate) to assess the real world use of the drive.