Lexar NQ100 480GB Solid State Drive

Model: Lexar NQ100 480GB Solid State Drive
Manufacturer: Lexar
Provided By: Lexar

Lexar has been a trusted name in the storage industry for more than 20 years. The company got its start as a division within Cirrus Logic before being spun off in 1996. Lexar quickly made a name for itself thanks to its USB and ATA controllers as well as its industry-leading memory cards and USB flash drives. In 2006, the company was acquired by Micron and merged with Crucial Technology under the name Lexar Media. Lexar continued to flourish under Micron but, in 2017, its parent company decided to get out of the removable media storage business. The Lexar brand was then acquired and relaunched by Shenzhen Longsys Electronics Co., Ltd. (Longsys) with a new product lineup including memory cards, card readers, USB flash drives and SSDs geared towards professional photographers, videographers and content creators.

This past winter, Lexar unveiled its latest SATA SSD, the NQ100. Aimed at everyday end-users looking to upgrade their laptop or desktop computer, the drive combines Lexar's DM928 controller with Micron's TLC NAND flash to deliver read speeds of up to 550MB/s for faster startups, data transfers and application load times. With no moving parts, the NQ100 SSD is also shock and vibration resistant, making it more reliable and durable than a typical hard drive. In addition, it offers cool, quiet operation and low power consumption for longer battery life.

The NQ100 is available in 240GB, 480GB and 980GB capacities. For this review, Lexar sent us the 480GB version of the drive which is capable of delivering up to 560 MB/s sequential read and 480 MB/s sequential write speeds.

Needless to say, this is only a taste of what the NQ100 has to offer. To give you an idea of what to expect, we'll take a closer look at Lexar's new SATA SSD and then see how well it performs. Does the NQ100 have what it takes? More importantly, is it the best bang for your buck? Keep reading as we find out.