The portable consoles segment is actively developing. Valve Steam Deck, Asus ROG Ally and similar solutions have created demand for M.2 2230 type drives. All major manufacturers have such SSDs, including Micron (2400, 2550 and 2500 lines), but only now the company has released these products under the Crucial brand .
Image source: crucial.com
The Crucial P310 is a family of M.2 2230 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs that boast impressive read and write speeds of 7.1 and 6 GB/s, respectively. So far, the family is represented by 1 and 2 TB models for $115 and $215, respectively. The drives use 232-layer 3D NAND chips and the latest Phison E27T controller without a DRAM buffer, manufactured using 12nm TSMC technology. According to Micron, both provide low power consumption during active use.
Image source: anandtech.com
The specifications indicate that the drives use 232L 3D QLC memory, notes AnandTech. Compared to the previously released Micron 2550 SSDs in the same form factor, replacing the controller helped achieve some improvements in terms of energy efficiency and performance. Together with high capacity at a modest price, these qualities are the advantages of the Crucial P310 family. But there are some drawbacks: the new SSDs do not have a very long service life – the manufacturer indicates a value of 0.12 DWPD (full drive overwrites per day), and this is a really modest figure in comparison with 0.33 DWPD, which are ready in the same segment offer competitors.