Is Lexar a Good SSD Brand? What Eight Reviews Tell Us

Yes, and at the top end emphatically so. Across eight published reviews of Lexar drives and memory, from a £39.99 SODIMM to a Gen 5 flagship, our scores run from 7.0 to 9.0, and that 9.0 matters: the NM790 4TB's 3,000 TBW endurance rating surpasses both the Samsung 990 Pro and WD Black SN850X at the same capacity, at a lower price. Lexar has stopped being the memory-card brand you half remember and become a genuine SSD contender. The honest caveat, which our reviews raise repeatedly, is disclosure: Lexar often won't publish the endurance figures, NAND types or controller details that the established names do.

This page is a research summary of our own published reviews, sources linked throughout. We report what testing our reviews document; we haven't lab-tested these drives ourselves.

What we base this on

• NM790 4TB (Gen 4, heatsink) scored 9.0
• ARES PRO 2TB (Gen 5) scored 8.5
• ES5 Portable 1TB (MagSafe, IP65) scored 8.5
• EQ790 2TB (Gen 4) scored 8.5
• NS100 2TB SATA scored 8.0
• SODIMM 8GB DDR4 scored 7.5
• UDIMM 16GB DDR4 scored 7.5
• NS100 1TB SATA scored 7.0

Where Lexar genuinely delivers

Flagship internals at sub-flagship prices. The NM790's endurance rating beats the biggest names at 4TB; the ARES PRO pairs a Phison E26 controller with full DRAM cache, which our review called the right internals for a Gen 5 flagship; the EQ790 carries real TLC NAND and on-board DRAM where rivals at its price quietly use QLC and HMB.

Honest measured performance. The NS100 2TB hit the SATA ceiling at a recorded 548MB/s in our review, which singled out Lexar for advertising honest rather than inflated figures on that drive.

Ideas the big names don't bother with. The ES5 portable's MagSafe mounting works as advertised for iPhone ProRes recording, with genuine 20Gbps speeds and IP65 rating.

What to watch for

The disclosure gap is the brand's real weakness. Three separate reviews hit it: the ES5 publishes no TBW endurance, NAND type or controller; the NS100 line publishes no TBW; and where figures exist, warranty terms trail rivals (three years on the NS100 1TB against five from competitors). You're trusting the drive, not the datasheet.

No long reliability track record yet. Our NM790 review says it plainly: Lexar doesn't yet have the decade of SSD history Samsung and WD have accumulated. The specs compete today; the longevity story is still being written.

Mind the segment. The SATA NS100s and the DDR4 memory are honest but ordinary (7.0 to 8.0 territory, relaxed CL22 timings on the RAM). The excitement is in the NVMe range.

The practical record. All eight reviewed products were available at the time of writing. The RAM carries a lifetime limited warranty per our review; SSD warranties vary by line, and we hold no published UK support contacts for Lexar on our records.

Who Lexar fits, and who should skip it

Builders who read reviews rather than brand labels get the best of Lexar: the NM790 at 4TB is, on our scores, one of the best value serious drives you can buy. The portable ES5 is the standout for iPhone videographers.

Skip Lexar if published endurance figures and decade-long track records are what let you sleep, or if you're buying write-heavy enterprise workloads on lines where TBW isn't disclosed.

The bottom line

Lexar earns its place on the shortlist wherever our reviews found real internals, which is most of the NVMe range. Everything we've covered is on the Lexar brand page.