Why it matters: If you're in need of storage space expansion allied with high read/write rates, you might want to check out Lexar's most recent offering, especially if your machine is a laptop or a small form factor PC. The Professional NM800 drives are thin enough for installation into smaller computers thanks to an innovative heat spreader, and pricing is not too high.

Lexar recently released two new high speed PCIe 4.0 SSDs, promising to bring extreme performance at a competitive price. The Professional NM800 SSD lineup targets content creators and gamers, and is intended for installation on both desktops and laptops.

It's now usual to see high performance SSDs coming with large heatsinks, which makes installation into smaller computers nonviable. Lexar's approach to this problem consists of equipping the drives with a thin graphene heat spreader, so that it doesn't take as much space.

The Lexar NM800 SSDs come in the M2.2280 form factor in two models that differ mainly in storage space (512GB and 1TB) and read/write speeds. Both have a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface, along with an NVMe 1.4-compliant controller and 3D TLC NAND memory.

  512GB model 1TB model
Sequential read up to 7000 MB/s up to 7400 MB/s
Sequential write up to 3000 MB/s up to 5800 MB/s
Random read IOPS up to 200K up to 400K
Random write IOPS up to 550K

up to 750K

The make and model of the NVMe 1.4 memory controller has not been disclosed, so we can't anticipate performance of the drives under heavy loads, but they are rated for 0.44 drive writes per day (DWPD), which is above average durability, since DWPD for typical consumer-grade SSDs are lower.

The new Lexar drives are expected to land at around $120 for the 512GB model and $215 for the 1TB model, which puts them in contention with the latest and greatest SSDs announced this year.