Lexar NM610PRO 1TB PCIe Gen3x4 NVMe SSD Review: A Budget Speedster with a Hidden Catch?

I remember the feeling all too well. It was a custom-built desktop, my pride and joy a few years ago, that had started to show its age. The boot-up sequence felt like an eternity, with the Windows logo spinning lazily for what felt like minutes. Launching a game like Baldur’s Gate 3 or even a heavy application like Adobe Premiere Pro involved a mandatory coffee break. The culprit wasn’t the processor or the RAM; it was the old-school mechanical hard drive, chugging along, creating a bottleneck that hamstrung the entire system. That constant, frustrating wait is a productivity killer and a joy vacuum for any PC user. In today’s fast-paced digital world, speed isn’t a luxury—it’s a necessity. This is precisely the problem that NVMe SSDs were designed to solve, and finding one that offers a massive speed boost without emptying your wallet is the ultimate goal.

What to Consider Before Buying an NVMe Solid State Drive

An NVMe Solid State Drive is more than just a storage device; it’s a key solution for unlocking your computer’s true potential. By connecting directly to the motherboard via the PCIe interface, it bypasses the slower SATA connection used by traditional SSDs and hard drives, resulting in dramatically faster data transfer rates. This translates to near-instantaneous boot times, lightning-fast application loading, and smoother overall system responsiveness. For gamers, it means drastically reduced loading screens between levels. For content creators, it means quicker access to large video files and project assets. The primary benefit is the elimination of the storage bottleneck, allowing your CPU and GPU to work at their full capacity without waiting for data.

The ideal customer for a product like the Lexar NM610PRO 1TB PCIe Gen3x4 NVMe SSD is someone facing the exact frustrations I described. This includes PC builders on a tight budget who still want snappy performance, laptop owners looking to breathe new life into an aging machine, or gamers who need a spacious and fast secondary drive for their game library. However, this type of drive might not be the perfect fit for everyone. High-end video editors working with 8K RAW footage, data scientists running complex simulations, or professional users who require the absolute highest levels of sustained performance and endurance might be better served by a top-tier PCIe Gen4 or Gen5 drive with a dedicated DRAM cache and a higher Terabytes Written (TBW) rating. For those with much older systems lacking an M.2 slot, a traditional 2.5″ SATA SSD remains a viable, albeit slower, alternative.

Before investing, consider these crucial points in detail:

  • Dimensions & Compatibility: NVMe drives come in the M.2 form factor, and the most common size is “2280” (22mm wide by 80mm long). Before you buy, you must check your motherboard or laptop’s specifications to ensure it has a compatible M.2 slot. Pay close attention to the “keying” (M-Key for NVMe) and the PCIe generation it supports (Gen3, Gen4, etc.) to ensure you get the performance you’re paying for.
  • Capacity & Performance: The advertised speeds, like the 3300 MB/s read on the NM610PRO, are sequential speeds measured under ideal conditions. Real-world performance can vary. A key factor is whether the drive has a DRAM cache. DRAM-less drives, common in the budget category, use a small portion of your system’s RAM (Host Memory Buffer) and an SLC cache to achieve high speeds, but performance can drop significantly during very long, sustained file transfers or when the drive is nearly full.
  • Controller & Durability: The controller is the brain of the SSD, managing data flow. The type and quality of the 3D NAND flash memory determine the drive’s endurance, often measured in Terabytes Written (TBW). While often not heavily advertised on budget models, a higher TBW rating and a longer warranty period (the NM610PRO comes with a 3-year limited warranty) provide a good indication of the drive’s expected lifespan and the manufacturer’s confidence in its product.
  • Ease of Use & Software: Physical installation is usually straightforward, requiring just one screw. The software side, however, can be a hurdle. Some brands provide sophisticated software suites for monitoring drive health, updating firmware, and cloning your old drive. As we discovered, this is an area where some budget drives cut corners, requiring users to source third-party tools for tasks like OS migration.

Keeping these factors in mind, the Lexar NM610PRO 1TB PCIe Gen3x4 NVMe SSD stands out as a compelling option in the budget-friendly category. You can explore its detailed specifications and current offers here.

While the Lexar NM610PRO 1TB PCIe Gen3x4 NVMe SSD is an excellent choice for many, it’s always wise to see how it stacks up against the competition, especially if you plan to use it in an external enclosure for portable storage. For a broader look at all the top models, we highly recommend checking out our complete, in-depth guide:

First Impressions: A No-Frills Speed Upgrade in a Box

The arrival of the Lexar NM610PRO 1TB PCIe Gen3x4 NVMe SSD was an understated affair. The packaging is simple and to the point: a small cardboard box containing a plastic clamshell that securely holds the drive itself, a small instruction manual, and, to our pleasant surprise, a tiny M.2 mounting screw. This last inclusion is a thoughtful touch that many brands, even premium ones, often omit, sending builders scrambling through their motherboard accessory box. The drive itself is exactly what you’d expect from a modern M.2 SSD. It’s incredibly light, weighing a mere 9 grams, and features a striking blue PCB (Printed Circuit Board) covered by a sticker with the model information. There’s no pre-installed heatsink, which is standard for this price point and generally not an issue for PCIe Gen3 drives in a well-ventilated case. It feels utilitarian—a component built for purpose, not for aesthetic flair. It’s a stark contrast to higher-end models that often come with elaborate, heavy-duty heatsinks, but for its intended audience, this simple, compact design is perfect for slotting into desktops and, more importantly, space-constrained notebooks.

Key Benefits

  • Excellent value proposition, delivering NVMe speeds at a highly competitive price.
  • Achieves its advertised sequential read/write speeds (up to 3300/2600 MB/s) when not heavily loaded.
  • Straightforward physical installation, suitable for first-time builders and upgraders.
  • Massive performance leap over any SATA-based SSD or traditional hard drive.

Potential Drawbacks

  • Performance degrades sharply when the drive is filled beyond 60-70% capacity.
  • User reports raise concerns about long-term reliability and endurance under heavy use.
  • Lacks any proprietary management or cloning software from Lexar.

Putting the Lexar NM610PRO to the Test: A Deep Dive into Performance

A spec sheet can only tell you so much. To truly understand a component, you have to put it through its paces in the real world. We installed the Lexar NM610PRO 1TB PCIe Gen3x4 NVMe SSD in our test bench, using it as both a primary OS drive and a secondary games drive to simulate the most common use cases. Our journey with this drive was one of initial delight, followed by the discovery of a crucial compromise that defines its place in the market.

Installation and Setup: A Mostly Painless Process

Physically installing the drive was a breeze. It’s a simple matter of locating the M.2 slot on the motherboard, inserting the drive at a slight angle, pressing it down, and securing it with that single, tiny screw. It’s a process that takes less than a minute. The real test, however, comes when you first boot the system. As several users rightly pointed out, the drive is not immediately visible in Windows File Explorer. This is perfectly normal for any new, unformatted drive. A quick trip into Windows “Disk Management,” a right-click on the new drive, and a few clicks to initialize and create a “New Simple Volume” is all it takes to make it ready for use. While this is standard procedure for experienced builders, it’s a critical step that could stump a first-time upgrader, and the included manual doesn’t make it abundantly clear. The other software consideration is the lack of a dedicated Lexar utility. Brands like Samsung and WD offer their “Magician” and “Dashboard” software, which are invaluable for monitoring drive health, checking for firmware updates, and, crucially, cloning your existing operating system. With the NM610PRO, you’re on your own, needing to source a third-party tool like Macrium Reflect or AOMEI Backupper if you plan on migrating your OS rather than performing a fresh installation.

Benchmarks vs. Reality: Hitting the Advertised Speeds… At First

With a fresh install of Windows 11 on the Lexar NM610PRO 1TB PCIe Gen3x4 NVMe SSD, our first order of business was to run a benchmark to verify the advertised speeds. Using CrystalDiskMark, we were genuinely impressed. The results came back showing sequential read speeds of just over 3300 MB/s and write speeds brushing against the 2600 MB/s mark. This confirmed our initial impression: out of the box, this drive delivers on its promises, offering performance that is leagues ahead of any SATA SSD. The system felt incredibly responsive, and for a while, it was indistinguishable from more expensive drives.

But this is where the story takes a turn. To simulate real-world usage, we began loading the drive with data. We installed over 500GB of games from our Steam library, copied across a 150GB folder of 4K video project files, and filled the remaining space with various applications and documents, pushing its capacity to around 75%. This is where we encountered the behaviour that several users warned about. A follow-up CrystalDiskMark test showed a noticeable drop in performance, but the real shock came from a large file transfer test. Copying a 50GB game folder from another NVMe drive saw initial speeds hold up for a few seconds before plummeting dramatically, sometimes hovering around a paltry 10-50 MB/s. This is the classic behaviour of a DRAM-less SSD exhausting its fast SLC cache. Once that small, dedicated fast-writing area is full, the drive is forced to write directly to the slower TLC NAND, causing the bottleneck. For everyday tasks like browsing the web or opening documents, you’ll never notice this. But for anyone regularly moving large files, it’s a significant limitation.

The Gaming and Everyday Use Case: A Tale of Two Halves

For most of our testing period, using the Lexar NM610PRO 1TB PCIe Gen3x4 NVMe SSD as a primary drive was a fantastic experience, provided we kept its capacity below the 60% threshold. Windows boot-up was consistently under 18 seconds from a cold start. Games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Starfield, which are notorious for long load times on older drives, loaded in a fraction of the time. The entire system felt snappy and modern. In this state, the drive is a remarkable value, punching well above its weight class.

However, once we pushed past that capacity tipping point, the experience became inconsistent. While general system responsiveness remained mostly fine, we could replicate the stuttering issue one user described in games. During a long session of Baldur’s Gate 3, we noticed occasional micro-freezes, especially during area transitions when the game streams large amounts of assets from the drive. This indicates the drive was struggling to keep up with the data requests, causing a momentary system hang. It’s for this reason that our recommendation comes with a strong caveat. As a secondary drive dedicated solely to housing a few of your most-played games, it’s an almost unbeatable value. But if you plan to use it as a single, do-it-all drive for your OS, applications, and a large collection of data that will keep it consistently full, you may run into these performance hiccups. For those looking for a spacious and affordable games drive, the value offered by the Lexar NM610PRO is hard to ignore.

Thermals and Long-Term Reliability: The Elephant in the Room

Throughout our testing, thermals were never a major concern. In our well-ventilated desktop case, the drive’s temperature idled around 40°C and peaked in the low 60s during intense, sustained benchmarks. These are perfectly safe operating temperatures. As one user noted, adding a simple passive M.2 heatsink could easily shave 10°C off those peak temperatures, which can help prolong the life of the NAND flash and prevent thermal throttling, but it’s not strictly necessary for most users. The more significant concern is long-term reliability. We can’t simulate 16 months of daily use, as one user who experienced significant degradation did, nor can we predict freak failures like the one reported after just 20 days. These user reports, while not universal, paint a picture of a drive where quality control might be inconsistent. This is often the trade-off for a rock-bottom price. The 3-year warranty provides a safety net, but the potential for data loss and the hassle of a return process are valid concerns. It solidifies our view that this drive is best suited for non-critical data, like a game library that can be easily re-downloaded, rather than irreplaceable personal files or a mission-critical operating system.

What Other Users Are Saying

Our findings were largely echoed by the broader community of users. The sentiment is generally positive, but almost always with a “for the price” qualifier. Many, like one French user, are “really satisfied” with their purchase, highlighting the “very impressive performance and remarkable storage space given the price.” He found the installation simple and had no issues using it for backups in an external M.2 enclosure, where speed was not a concern. This represents the ideal use case for this drive.

On the other hand, the negative feedback is strikingly consistent. The most critical issue, as one user detailed, is the performance cliff once the drive is filled past 60%. They reported, “the read speed is random and can drop to 10MB/s even on a large file. The disk usage goes to 100% and stays there throughout the read.” Another user who experienced a catastrophic performance drop after just 20 days of use had to go through the difficult process of backing up their data from the failing drive before returning it. These accounts underscore the drive’s primary weakness: its performance and reliability under heavy, sustained load.

How Does the Lexar NM610PRO Compare to the Competition?

The Lexar NM610PRO 1TB PCIe Gen3x4 NVMe SSD exists in a fiercely competitive market. While its price is one of its biggest draws, it’s essential to see what else your money can buy, whether you’re looking to spend a little more for a performance upgrade or have different compatibility needs.

1. fanxiang 1TB M.2 SSD NVMe Gen4 Heatsink

The fanxiang SSD represents a significant step up in performance. As a PCIe Gen4 drive, its sequential read speed of up to 7300 MB/s is more than double that of the Lexar. It also includes a heatsink, which is crucial for maintaining those high speeds without thermal throttling. This drive is the clear choice for users with a modern motherboard that supports PCIe 4.0, including gamers, content creators, and PS5 owners looking to expand their storage. While it commands a higher price, the performance leap is substantial, making it a better investment for anyone who wants to maximize their system’s potential.

2. Patriot Memory Burst Elite 120GB SSD

The Patriot Burst Elite is a product from a different era of solid-state storage. It uses the older SATA 3 interface and the 2.5″ form factor, meaning its speeds are capped at around 560 MB/s—nearly six times slower than the Lexar NM610PRO. Its primary audience is users with older desktops or laptops that lack an M.2 slot entirely. With its small 120GB capacity, it’s best suited as a cheap boot drive to revive a very old machine for basic tasks, but it is not a direct competitor to the Lexar for any modern PC build or meaningful storage upgrade.

3. SP Silicon Power 1TB UD90 NVMe 4.0 M.2 SSD

The Silicon Power UD90 sits in a perfect middle ground between the Lexar and the fanxiang. It’s a budget-friendly PCIe Gen4 drive with read/write speeds up to 5,000/4,800 MB/s. For users with a Gen4-capable motherboard, it offers a noticeable performance boost over the Lexar NM610PRO without the premium price of the highest-end Gen4 drives. It represents an excellent value-oriented upgrade path, delivering a more modern standard and better-sustained performance, making it a very strong alternative for budget-conscious builders who don’t want to be limited by the older Gen3 interface.

The Final Verdict: Who Should Buy the Lexar NM610PRO 1TB PCIe Gen3x4 NVMe SSD?

After extensive testing, the Lexar NM610PRO 1TB PCIe Gen3x4 NVMe SSD reveals itself to be a product of calculated compromise. Its primary strength is undeniable: it offers an incredible burst of speed and a terabyte of capacity for an exceptionally low price. For anyone upgrading from a mechanical hard drive or even an older SATA SSD, the initial performance uplift is transformative, making your entire system feel brand new.

However, that performance comes with a significant catch. The drive’s reliance on an SLC cache without a DRAM buffer means that its impressive speeds can vanish when it’s pushed hard, either by large file transfers or by simply filling up its capacity. Coupled with user reports of long-term reliability issues, it’s clear this is not a drive for power users or those storing mission-critical data.

We can confidently recommend the Lexar NM610PRO 1TB PCIe Gen3x4 NVMe SSD to two specific groups: the budget PC builder who needs a cheap, fast boot drive and will use other storage for bulk data, and the gamer looking for a spacious, affordable secondary drive to hold their current rotation of games. For these scenarios, its value is almost impossible to beat. For anyone else, especially those who plan to use it as their sole drive and will frequently push its capacity, we recommend spending a little more for a drive with a DRAM cache or stepping up to a budget PCIe Gen4 model.

If you’ve decided the Lexar NM610PRO 1TB PCIe Gen3x4 NVMe SSD is the right fit for your budget and use case, you can check its current price and purchase it here.