Lexar Professional NM700 1TB, M.2 2280 / M-Key / PCIe 3.0 x4

When averaged over our new real-life performance test suite, we see the Lexar NM700 in the upper third of our test group. The fastest M.2 NVMe drives are up to 5% faster—not a whole lot. Compared to typical SATA drives the performance uplift is around 20%, and the NM700 is 10% faster than entry-level M.2 NVMe disks. These results are very decent, but not high enough to justify the $170 price tag, more on that later.

The Lexar NM700 is a classic and all-around drive. Whether you’re a creator, sittings hours on hours editing videos, photos, and similar things, or you’re a gamer. Your system will like this drive. Office PCs and any other type will equally benefit from the capacity and performance. Granted, it isn’t the fastest we have tested, but it does well. It delivers what it promises and it is more than plenty for most people.

The Lexar NM700 M.2 NVMe looks good from the performance data of our benchmarks. NM700 is based on TLC NAND flash and is available in 256 GB, 512GB, and 1TB model. Our sample of the NM700 came in 1TB form. Based on Lexar’s datasheet on NM700 1TB I was supposed to get sequential read and write speeds up to 3500/2000 MB/s. In our test lab, I came extremely close to these numbers so as far as the performance goes NM700 operates exactly as advertised. The price of the Lexar NM700 1TB is spotted around $190. While doing our research I wasn’t able to find many sellers that would offer this NVMe for sale. Amazon only offers 256 and 512 versions of NM700. Lexar also had another NVMe for sale NM610 but at less performance than NM700. The NM610 sells for about $154 and has a performance of up to 2100/1600MB/s Read/Write. So based on our test data NM700 is significantly improved over NM610. I do think that the $190 price is steep. We see a much cheaper solution on the market with the same or better performance for much less. For instance PNY XLR8 CS3030 1TB for $ 130 USD and Sabrent Rocket Q 1TB for $ 120 USD. If you can find NM700 for $130, it would be a good buy. But at higher prices, it would be difficult to justify the value.