Lexar NQ100 480GB SSD Review

Final Thoughts

What I like about Lexar NQ100 SSD is that it is affordable and you will not feel any performance decline when you start adding files to this drive.  In my testing the performance drop was so little that the average user won’t be able to notice it.  Another interesting aspect of this SSD is that it does not have a DRAM cache chip which makes me think that there is some kind of fast caching happening on the controller.  In any case, the performance of the drive was very close to what was advertised (550MB/s). The NQ100 handled mixed IO jobs just as well as simple read and write tests.

Right now Lexar NQ100 sells for about $ 50 USD and that is a pretty good value considering you are getting a good storage SSD with 480GB of usable space.  This drive would make a great upgrade for OS over the spinning hard disk.  The price is competitive to other brands like Kingston and PNY but you have to keep in mind the performance aspect of the SSD.  We see a lot of SSDs when loaded with data drop their performance due to caching or other factors.  This particular SSD has tested well in the loaded state.  I would recommend giving this SSD a chance.  It is a great value and has good performance.