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The Lexar Play SE, or Special Edition, is the follow-up to the original PS5-focused Lexar Play . This drive is special, all right, although perhaps not in the way you would expect. Second editions of drives are often a pathway towards getting away with a hardware swap, and the Play SE, on the surface, looks deceptively like its forebearer. Underneath the capable, PS5-compliant heatsink, there are some interesting changes at play. It’s worth an extra look since 4TB drives are becoming more expensive just as the sweet spot seemed to be moving above 2TB.
The good news is that this drive is perfectly suitable for your PS5, and it could work inside a desktop, too. It’s best as a secondary or games drive rather than your primary solution, given its budget status. It’s only available at 4TB, which, given its hardware, which we’ll get into more later, firmly places it in the “extra storage” category. Superficially and by TBW specification, it looks like the original Play, which used the excellent Maxio MAP1602 controller and 232-Layer YMTC TLC flash, but appearances can be deceiving. This is a DRAM-less, QLC-infused SSD that only makes sense as a low-cost solution. Its weak performance and power efficiency keep it from being anything greater than that, as we’ll see.
Lexar Play SE Specifications
Swipe to scroll horizontally Product 4TB Pricing N/A Form Factor M.2 2280 SS Interface / Protocol PCIe 4.0 x4 / NVMe 2.0 Controller InnoGrit IG5236 DRAM N/A (HMB) Flash Memory Intel 144-Layer QLC Sequential Read 7,000 MB/s Sequential Write 6,000 MB/s Random Read N/A Random Write N/A Endurance (TBW) 3,200TB Part Number LNMPL8S004T-RNNNU Warranty 5-Year
The Lexar Play SE is only available at 4TB. This is a good thing, as this drive doesn’t really make sense at other capacities. It needs at least 2TB to hit peak performance, and with the competition that exists, it has the most realistic chance of success at 4TB. It can achieve up to 7,000 / 6,000 MB/s for sequential reads and writes with no IOPS given. This is satisfactory as a drive like this is not meant to be used for heavy workloads, although this controller can manage up to 700K IOPS. The warranty is for a full five years and, in addition, 800TB of writes per TB capacity. This last bit is interesting as 800TBW per TB is above the standard and is at least double what we would expect for a QLC-based drive. It’s at TLC flash levels of endurance, which is a bonus.
Lexar Play SE Software and Accessories
Lexar has two downloads for its SSDs: Lexar DiskMaster and Lexar DataShield. The first is Lexar’s SSD toolbox, which has all of the expected functions. You can check system and drive information, drive health, and for firmware updates. Drives can also be scanned for errors and performance-tested, and the application also allows for secure erase and data transfer. DataShield additionally offers encryption for data protection.
Lexar Play SE: A Closer Look
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