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M.2 2230 drives are a bit of a luxury, packing in high levels of performance in a small space. These drives always carried a premium, which makes for a challenging purchase decision, and the reasons for the premium have changed. Before, the premium was due to this form factor being a niche segment with few options, and now it’s due to a memory squeeze that makes high-capacity drives much more expensive. So when a drive like the PNY CS2342 comes along, which is available in 2TB at an accessible price, it’s worth paying attention.
The CS2342 has known, mature hardware that provides excellent performance without producing a lot of heat. This is important for this form factor. While it’s far from the most efficient drive we’ve tested, it’s good enough. You can get good flash with a 2TB drive in a single-sided form factor, which, with reasonable power efficiency, is all you need. There are drives that will perform better in some scenarios, there are more efficient drives, and there are drives that could be less expensive with QLC flash. However, if the goal is simply to acquire a competent, general-purpose drive, this model is an excellent choice.
PNY CS2342 Specifications
Swipe to scroll horizontally Header Cell - Column 0 1TB 2TB Pricing N/A $269.99 Form Factor M.2230 (Single-sided) M.2230 (Single-sided) Interface / Protocol PCIe 4.0 x4
NVMe 1.4 PCIe 4.0 x4
NVMe 1.4 Controller Phison E27T Phison E27T DRAM N/A (HMB) N/A (HMB) Flash Memory Kioxia 162-Layer TLC (BiCS6) Kioxia 162-Layer TLC (BiCS6) Sequential Read 7,300 MB/s 7,300 MB/s Sequential Write 6,000 MB/s 6,000 MB/s Random Read N/A N/A Random Write N/A N/A Security N/A N/A Endurance 600TBW 1,200TBW Part Number M230CS2342-1TB-TB M230CS2342-2TB-TB Warranty 5-Year 5-Year
The PNY CS2342 is available at 1TB and 2TB, priced at $269.99 for the latter at the time of review. The 1TB was out of stock, but there are other options available if you’re willing to compromise on speed or flash type, like the Kingston NV3 (2230) . The CS2324’s pricing at 2TB is good for what it is – a high-speed PCIe 4.0 SSD with TLC flash, in this form factor – but you can save some money by going with QLC. The Crucial P310 is still in stock for the intrepid.
If you are instead looking for an M.2 2242 solution – and you can extend an M.2 2230 drive if that makes more sense – then your options right now are also limited. The Corsair MP600 Micro, which is the M.2 2242 version of the MP600 Mini (E27T) , is priced at $189.99+ on Amazon and is not a bad choice. Alternatively, the Transcend MTE410S , which we have not yet reviewed, is available at $183.90, and we would recommend this drive if you are primarily concerned with reliability or have a PCIe 3.0 device. It uses an SMI SM2269XT – see our Lexar Play (2230) review to get a feel for this controller – but the MTE410S uses older BiCS5 flash in comparison to other options. The CS2342 could still work here with an extender as a compromise.
For performance, the CS2342 can hit up to 7,300 / 6,000 MB/s for sequential reads and writes, with no IOPS specs given by the manufacturer, although we know this hardware can hit around 1 million IOPS. If you are interested in the latter, you can find details in the ATTO & CrystalDiskMark benchmarks on the following page. The drive has a standard five-year warranty with up to 600TB of writes per TB of capacity.
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