Why you can trust Tom's Hardware Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.
Corsair has been hitting it out of the park recently with its SSD releases. First, the MP700 Pro XT, the fastest overall drive we’ve ever tested, and now the MP700 Micro. This follow-up is the fastest drive in its form factor, with virtually no drawbacks, which, by itself, would be worthy of accolades. However, the drive is also exceedingly power-efficient and is available up to a whopping 4TB in a single-sided design. If you’re a lover of shorter SSDs, this is as good as it gets.
All of this praise is unfortunately somewhat overshadowed by the current state of memory. Crucial’s pivot away from the consumer market in favor of AI data center customers will only exacerbate an already challenging situation with ever-rising storage prices. The MP700 Micro is currently satisfactorily priced if you are gunning for 4TB, but it’s still a sizable investment that rivals the MSRP of some portable gaming systems. The real issue, though, is that M.2 2242 is a niche form factor, and sometimes you don’t need or want 4TB. Yes, stock drives in systems have been getting larger – raise your hand if you remember the 64GB Steam Deck – but the new realities of the memory market may lead to a reduction here. Developers like those behind Helldivers 2 are already working to reduce game install sizes, too. This could make even 1TB drives worthwhile again, since the scaling cost of storage will mostly be from the flash.
Either way, Corsair has a winner on its hands with this drive, and that exclusivity or early launch probably cost it a fair bit. We applaud the gumption; this is exactly the kind of drive we like to see, even if the potential audience is smaller than usual. The timing isn’t great, but we still highly recommend it if you’re part of that group.
Corsair MP700 Micro Specifications
Swipe to scroll horizontally Product 2TB 4TB Pricing $219.99 $484.99 Form Factor M.2 2242 (SS) M.2 2242 (SS) Interface / Protocol PCIe 5.0 x4
NVMe 2.0 PCIe 5.0 x4
NVMe 2.0 Controller Phison E31T Phison E31T DRAM N/A (HMB) N/A (HMB) Memory Kioxia 218-Layer (BiCS8) TLC Kioxia 218-Layer (BiCS8) TLC Sequential Read 10,000 MB/s 9,400 MB/s Sequential Write 8,500 MB/s 8,100 MB/s Random Read 1,300K IOPS 1,200K IOPS Random Write 1,400K IOPS 1,400K IOPS Power (Active) 5.9W 5.9W Endurance (TBW) 1,200TB 2,400TB Part Number CSSD-F2000GBMP700MCR CSSD-F4000GBMP700MCR Warranty 5-Year 5-Year
The Corsair MP700 Micro is intended to be sold in 2TB and 4TB capacities, although currently only the latter is available on Amazon. This seems counterintuitive until you realize the drive’s main selling point is that it can reach 4TB in a single-sided M.2 2242 form factor. 2TB is still impressive, but can be reached with multiple M.2 2230 drives on the market. For pricing, the drive is currently listed at $219.99 and $484.99 – you can still get the 2TB off of Corsair’s site. This pricing is not at all bad, given current market conditions, especially as the drive has a fast controller with very good TLC flash. We would recommend grabbing the 4TB – which is what we’re reviewing today – with some haste if you want something incredible in this form factor.
The drive uses a Gen 5 controller, the Phison E31T, and can reach up to 10,000/8,500 MB/s for sequential reads and writes. Random performance is also good, up to 1,300K/1,400K read/write IOPS. The drive performs best at 2TB as the amount of flash dies required for 4TB is high for a four-channel, DRAM-less controller, especially at the required speeds. While this drive will not saturate an x4 PCIe 5.0 connection, it’s plenty fast to saturate 4.0 and can help deliver a bit more performance with a Gen 5 slot. The drive is warrantied for the standard 600TB of writes per TB capacity with five-year coverage.
... continue reading