INTRODUCTION

    Capacity or speed, this is a question that tends to occupy the thoughts of many consumers looking to get their hands on a brand new SSD (or any drive really). Personally, I always place durability above capacity and speed but if I had to choose between the two then getting a higher capacity drive (alas slower) would be my preference. This is exactly the target audience of the latest NQ780 M.2 Gen4 SSD by Lexar and so with me today I have the 4TB capacity model.

    For more than 25 years, Lexar has been trusted as a leading global brand of memory solutions. Our award-winning lineup includes memory cards, USB Flash Drives, card readers, solid-state drives, and DRAM. With so many options, it’s easy to find the right Lexar solution to fit your needs.

    The brand new NQ780 line of PCIe 4.0 Gen 4x4 M.2 NVMe v1.4 SSDs is currently available in 1TB/2TB/4TB capacities and is based on the Rainier IG5236 eight-channel NAND controller by Innogrit together with 3D QLC NAND flash from Longsys (was unable to find the exact model - will update soon). Strangely enough we've seen quite a few SSDs with the same controller by Innogrit complete with DRAM modules so this isn't a DRAM-less NAND controller (seems it can be used as such however). Once again, the Innogrit Rainier IG5236 features end-to-end data protection, LDPC (low-density parity check) error-correction with SRAM ECC, programmable RAID, SLC smart cache, AES encryption and fully supports SHA, RSA, ONFI 4.1 and Toggle 4.0. Finally Lexar covers the NQ780 line with a 5-year limited warranty and as for endurance they report an MTBF (mean time between failures) of 1.5 million hours for all models and a TBW of 600 for the 1TB model, 1200 for the 2TB model and 2400 for the 4TB model.