Lexar NM610 500GB M.2 SSD Review

The SMI 2263XT is one of the most popular controllers found in current market NVME solutions. With the XT being the DRAMless setup, these drives are intended for entry-level use cases.

The NM610 is Lexar's entry-level solution, as you have likely figured out by now, it is a 2263XT platform that is paired with 64L Intel 3D NAND flash.

Marketing performance lines up with past XT platforms that have come through at 2100 MB/s read and 1600 MB/s write. Capacity options include 250GB and 500GB, along with 1TB for those wanting a bit more, all built on the NVMe 1.3 standard. Drive endurance is rated at 250TBW for the 500GB solution in house or 0.46 DWPD.

The MSRP of the 500GB NM610 comes in at $115.99 with a three-year warranty.

Packaging still has the feel of a Lexar box, for the NM610, a black and silver colorway with an image of the drive below. Capacity is listed top right along with model identification.

The back goes into more detail with dimensions of the drive along with box contents.

The top or front of the NM610 has a pretty basic sticker with identifying information.

The back has a few PCB traces, nothing more - that said, this is an m.2 2280 drive, so that's expected.

Diving into the numbers, CDM gives the NM610 2044 MB/s read and 1667 MB/s write. 4KQ1 is on par with other 2263XT solutions at 67 MB/s read 200 MB/s write.

ATTO gives us a breakdown of the performance over varying file sizes. The NM610 has a range between 16K and 1M where it performs the best.

Diving into PCMark10, we see the NM610 at the bottom of our chart in the Quick System Drive test, with a score of 1575.

Full System Drive looks a bit better for the NM610, scoring at 1579 and bandwidth at 259 MB/s.

Price/Performance is not very kind to the NM610 due to its MSRP much higher than competing drives. That said, it's not at the bottom, but rather three up at 91%.

Closing this out, the NM610 is equal in almost every way to most 2263XT platform solutions we have tested. In fact, nearly all of these drives are using the same NAND as well, putting it down to packaging and price or brand loyalty, perhaps.

As you can see above, the NM610 is a solid entry-level solution, hitting nearly identical numbers to the Colorful CN600, Biostar M700, and P34A60 from Silicon Power - all XT powered solutions. At peak, we reached 2044 MB/s read followed by 1667 MB/s write with decent Q1 at 67 MB/s.

Value isn't a strong feature of the NM610. Its pricing puts it double of most other XT-powered drives at $115.99. You can pick up the 1TB model of the Biostar M700 for $94.99, $20 less than the NM610 500GB.

Tyler's Test System Specifications

• Motherboard: ASUS Crosshair VIII Formula X570 (buy from Amazon)
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 (buy from Amazon)
• RAM: Corsair Vengeance 16GB 2x8GB DDR4 3600 (buy from Amazon)
• Cooler: Corsair Hydro H60 (buy from Amazon)
• Case: Corsair Carbide 275R (buy from Amazon)
• OS Storage: Corsair MP600 1TB (buy from Amazon)
• Power Supply: Corsair RM850x (buy from Amazon)
• OS: Microsoft Windows 10 (buy from Amazon)