Micron's game-changing budget DRAMless SSD could spell the end of low performance SATA drives — independent reviews show it trounces Samsung's 990 EVO on popular benchmarks

Micron recently unveiled its 2650 client SSD, the first to be made using 276-layer 3D NAND, a new record for the company.

The Gen 9 NAND offers the fastest IO speed in the industry at 3.6GBps, which Micron claims is 50% faster than competitive NAND shipping in an SSD and with up to 99% better read and 88% better write bandwidth. It’s also 73% denser and has up to a 28% smaller board area compared to competing products.

The TLC (3 bits/cell) 2650 SSD uses a PCIe gen 4 interface and comes in an M.2 gumstick form factor, available in 2230, 2242, and 2280 sizes, and in capacities ranging from 256GB to 1TB.

Impressive results

To see how the promising newcomer fared, TweakTown pitted the 2650 SSD against a range of competitors, including products from Crucial, Sabrent, Corsair, Western Digital, and Seagate, using a broad selection of benchmarking tools.

The site notes before testing that “being a client or OEM SSD brings with it some disadvantages as it relates to performance comparisons between it and retail SSDs. This is because client SSDs, in general, are tuned differently than retail DIY SSDs. OEM or client SSDs are slated for mostly prebuilt systems where the end user will, for the most part, never even see or touch the SSD.”

Performance across the tests varied for the 2650 SSD, but it performed well in the PCMark 10 Full System Drive Benchmark, the test TweakTown describes as the one that "traditionally brings DRAMless SSDs to their knees.” It was beaten only by Crucial/Micron's own N58R QLC arrayed P310 2TB, currently the highest-performing retail DRAMless SSD around, but performed better than it in other tests.

If you want to see exactly how well the 2650 SSD compared with the other drives, including Samsung’s 990 EVO, you’ll want to check out the full benchmarking results , but TweakTown sums it up beautifully stating, “Micron's 2650 1TB OEM/client SSD isn't the ‘fastest’ of its kind, but it is certainly the most powerful of its kind and is in fact the fifth most powerful flash-based PCIe Gen4 SSD ever made.”

Perhaps more excitingly, the site concludes, “It also gives us an introduction to a new ninth-generation of high-speed NAND that brings with it the promise of 4-channel SSDs capable of 14 GB/s throughput, massively improved AI infrastructure scalability, and the speed necessary to fully utilize PCIe Gen6 as it comes into play.”

More from TechRadar Pro

• These are the best SSDs you can buy right now
• Micron's new SSD gets glowing reviews thanks to new controller and new NAND
• Micron’s 30.72TB 9550 NVMe SSD is world's fastest enterprise SSD