Lexar NQ780 4TB NVMe SSD review

Okay, I’ll come out and say, the Lexar NQ780 is a bit average. A bit dull. Typically, when it comes to reviewing this type of hardware, especially SSDs, there is always something to write about. Something a bit intriguing or some weird quirk that the manufacturer modified in a certain way that led to weird performance numbers one way or another. However, this is not the case with the NQ780.

It’s kind of intriguing because it’s not that intriguing. In a world of blazing speedy PCIe 5.0 drives like the SN8100, up-to-date intuitive controller designs, groundbreaking NAND flash technologies with quadrillions of layers up, down, left and right, the NQ780 simply exists.

It’s not the best SSD of 2025, that’s for sure. It performs and delivers speed in the same way as the Samsung 990 Evo Plus when I reviewed it in October 2024, or the Crucial P310 in January this year. It also targets this market. This is a budget solution for people more interested in inexpensive capacity than charging speed and time. It’s not particularly terrible, it just outperforms or matches virtually every other PCIe 4.0 drive that’s come before, and it achieved this about eight months later than the party.

Its biggest selling point is its price, and although I’m writing this review in the middle of the carnage that is November (thanks, Black Friday), Lexar’s aggressive retail price gives the NQ780 a hell of an affordability rating. Namely, it’s $0.07 per GB in the US and £0.06 per GB in venerable Blighty. With the updated prices in my comparison database, this is one of the lowest, if not the lowest, price for a gig that I have seen to date. If it stays like this (many drives are currently rising in price due to the ongoing memory crisis), this could be a lifesaver.

Now that we have this one intriguing element out of the way, let me bore you with the extremely mundane hardware situation we’re discussing here. The NQ780’s component configuration is quite strange. There are no Phison, Maxiotek, Silicon Motion, or Sandisk controllers here; instead, we were greeted with the Innogrit IG5236 eight-channel 12nm controller that was launched way back in 2020. Everything is based on the PCIe 4.0 platform, in the M.2-2280 format, and is paired with a stack of 144-layer QLC NAND flash memory from Intel, which fits in packages with a capacity of 1 TB. This means that in the case of this 4 TB model we have four on single-sided memory (in line with current trends, making it compatible with many laptops, consoles, PCs, etc.).

This should tell you right away and then two things. Firstly, it’s a bit more effective than most current drives and a bit less effective, and secondly, there’s a lot of venerable hardware hanging in its voluptuous, flashy sticker form, and you’d be right. This almost feels like a discontinuation and rebrand rather than a up-to-date release, especially considering the age of this controller.

Unfortunately, as you may or may not be surprised, the performance is what you’d expect from an SSD of this caliber. Although the sequences are initially high, once the pSLC cache becomes full it slows down to indexing.

Testbed for PC gamers
Processor: AMD Ryzen 9 9900X | ARIES: 64 GB (2×32 GB) Team Group T-Create Expert DDR5 @ 6000 C34 | Graphics Processor: Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Super | Motherboard: Asus ROG Strix X870E-E Gaming WiFi/NZXT N9 X870E | CPU Cooler: Asus ROG Reujin III 360 ARGB Extreme | Charger: 1200W NZXT C1200 (2024) 80+ Gold | Chassis: Geometric model of the future 5

CrystalDiskMark measured seq read and write speeds of 7,446 MB/s and 6,601 MB/s, respectively, putting it on par with drives like the WD Blue SN5100. This isn’t a bad result by any means, but switch to random 4K tests and the fight changes quickly. The SN5100 dominates the NQ780, logging 107MB/s in writes compared to the NQ780’s paltry 70MB/s. This number is actually much worse than meets the eye, as it makes the NQ780 joint the second-most tough of all 19 drives I’ve tested over the past 12 months. He took 17th place out of 19 starts…

This is crucial because 4K random read performance is extremely critical for us gamers, as it is generally comparable to how AAA titles read files on an SSD. Think of it as the CPU taking a game asset from here, a texture file from there, a mesh from somewhere, audio lines from there and you’re on your way. These resources are not stored linearly (or sequentially) as with photos or videos, and the NQ780’s penniless display in this case translates into game loading test times as expected.

Final Fantasy XIV Shadowbrings benchmark accelerates at an astonishingly tardy 7.869 seconds on average. Which, while again relatively speedy in real-world conditions, pales in comparison to current SSD competition. This is also particularly damning considering that FF XIV favors larger capacity drives, and I’m testing a 4TB model here, while most of our results come from 2TB models.

This thing confuses me. It’s almost like someone let AI LLM make a business decision here. He spotted a bunch of inexpensive NAND, a few budget controllers from yesteryear at a bargain price, and put it all together to make a speedy and speedy drive that just can’t quite keep up with its current 4.0 counterparts.

Its biggest advantage is its aggressive price, but I can’t lend a hand but feel that you’d be much better off investing in the extra performance these alternatives offer. For example, the SN5100 cost only a little more (though it’s now priced much higher), and yet it delivers exemplary performance in every category compared, even with QLC NAND. You can just do so much better and that’s the problem. Releasing a drive like this today is simply not enough, but industry-wide price increases could keep it in the game (if it can stay at this price for a long time).

Best SSD for gaming 2025