Silicon Motion
Lexar has a long history of serving the flash-based consumer storage market in the form of SSDs, memory cards, and USB flash drives. After having started out as a Micron brand, the company was acquired by Longsys which has diversified its product lineup with regular introduction of new products. Recently, the company announced a number of portable SSDs targeting different market segments. The Lexar SL500 Portable SSD is one of the moderately priced 20 Gbps PSSDs in that set. The SL500 is able to achieve its price point thanks to the use of a native USB flash controller - the Silicon Motion SM2320. The unique aspect is the use of YMTC 3D TLC NAND (compared to the usual Micron or BiCS NAND that we have...
LaCie Rugged Mini SSD Review: Power-Efficient Flash Storage at 20 Gbps
LaCie's portable storage drives have enjoyed a fan following, particularly among creative professionals valuing both performance and product design / appearance. After Seagate's acquisition, the brand has continued to...
8 by Ganesh T S on 1/3/2024
Crucial X10 Pro Portable SSD Review: 20 Gbps Performance in a Budget Offering
The portable SSD market has seen rapid growth over the last decade. Almost all of the tier-one NAND flash manufacturers have jumped in with multiple offerings, presenting consumers with...
19 by Ganesh T S on 11/10/2023
Crucial X9 Pro Portable SSD Review: Micron 176L 3D NAND Delivers Record UFD Consistency
Crucial introduced their X9 Pro and X10 Pro high-performance portable SSDs last month. Based on Silicon Motion's SM2320 native USB flash controller, coupled with Micron's 176L 3D TLC NAND...
18 by Ganesh T S on 8/18/2023
Silicon Motion Readies PCIe Gen5 SSD Platform with 3.5W Power Consumption [UPDATED]
UPDATE 8/24: As it turns out, the 3.5W figure referes to power consumption of the controller alone, not the whole SSD. The story has been updated accordingly. We also...
19 by Anton Shilov on 8/9/2023
Crucial X9 Pro and X10 Pro High-Performance Portable SSDs Announced
Crucial's X6 and X8 Portable SSDs have been attractive budget options for the mainstream consumers looking to purchase high-capacity direct-attached storage drives. The company has been delivering some industry-firsts...
8 by Ganesh T S on 7/25/2023
Transcend ESD310C Dual-Interface UFD Review: Silicon Motion Powers Portable SSD in a Thumb Drive
Transcend recently introduced the ESD310C portable SSD in a thumb drive form-factor. A compact device with both Type-A and Type-C USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) interfaces, the ESD310C...
28 by Ganesh T S on 6/22/2023
Silicon Motion SM2268XT DRAM-less NVMe SSD Controller: PCIe 4.0 Speeds on a Budget
The excitement in the client SSD space recently has understandably been on the Gen 5 front. However, cooling requirements have made it difficult for vendors to bring effective M.2...
17 by Ganesh T S on 2/16/2023
Solidigm Announces P41 Plus SSD: Taking Another Shot at QLC With Cache Tiering
Although Intel is no longer directly in the SSD market these days, their SSD team and related technologies continue to live on under the SK hynix umbrella as Solidigm...
44 by Ryan Smith on 8/2/2022
Silicon Motion Announces SM8366 PCIe 5.0 x4 NVMe Controller and MonTitan SSD Solutions Platform for Enterprise Storage
In the lead up to the Flash Memory Summit next week, many vendors have started announcing their new products. Today, Silicon Motion is unveiling their first enterprise-focused PCIe 5.0...
3 by Ganesh T S on 7/28/2022
Kingston DataTraveler Max UFD Series Review: New Type-A Thumb Drive Retains NVMe Performance
Kingston's new products in the portable flash-based external storage space have met with good market reception over the last year or so. Two products in particular - the Kingston...
17 by Ganesh T S on 7/11/2022
Kingston XS2000 Portable SSDs Review: USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 Goes Mainstream
Flash-based portable drives have become popular fast storage options for both content creators and backups-seeking consumers. The advent of high-speed interfaces such as USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps...
19 by Ganesh T S on 11/10/2021
Kingston DataTraveler Max UFD Review: NVMe Performance in a USB Thumb Drive
Rapid advancements in flash technology and continued improvements in high-speed interfaces have driven the growth of small, bus-powered portable SSDs. Kingston introduced the DataTraveler Max in August 2021 as...
12 by Ganesh T S on 9/30/2021
USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 Portable SSDs Go Native: The Silicon Motion SM2320 UFD Controller Preview
The external storage market has experienced rapid growth over the last few years, particularly in the retail consumer segment. It has been fueled in part by advancements in bus-powered...
18 by Ganesh T S on 9/16/2021
Next Gen NVMe SD Card Review: The SM2708 Controller Serves it Hot and Fast
Flash-based removable media has a host of use cases in products ranging from content capture devices to portable game consoles. Behind the standards of these is the SD Association...
43 by Ganesh T S on 9/9/2021
The ADATA GAMMIX S50 Lite 2TB SSD Review: Mainstream PCIe Gen4
Today we're taking a look at ADATA's XPG Gammix S50 Lite, a mid-range consumer NVMe SSD based on Silicon Motion's new SM2267 controller. Among other notable features, the Gammix...
93 by Billy Tallis on 4/30/2021
Silicon Motion Announces SM2708 SD Express Controller
Silicon Motion has announced their first SD Card controller to support the NVMe-based SD Express interface. The new SM2708 controller is capable of sequential transfer speeds of 1700 MB/s...
17 by Billy Tallis on 4/7/2021
The Intel SSD 670p (2TB) Review: Improving QLC, But Crazy Pricing?!?
Intel's third generation QLC SSD delivers much-needed performance improvements due to its new 144-layer 3D QLC NAND and a new low-cost SSD controller from Silicon Motion.
73 by Billy Tallis on 3/1/2021
Kingston at CES 2021: New NVMe SSDs and a USB 3.2 Portable SSD
Kingston introduced a variety of new storage products at CES 2021, announcing new NVMe SSDs ranging from entry-level to high-end consumer and enterprise drives, plus new portable storage products. NV1...
1 by Billy Tallis on 1/14/2021
New Enterprise SSD Controllers From Silicon Motion, Phison, FADU
In the past month, three SSD controller designers have announced new enterprise NVMe SSD controllers, bringing a wave of new competition to the high-end enterprise/datacenter SSD market. FADU is...
5 by Billy Tallis on 11/25/2020
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