Corsair MP700 Micro 4TB SSD Review: A monster in the tiny M.2 2242 form factor
SOURCE:Tom's Hardware|BY: Shane Downing
The Corsair MP700 Micro is everything you want from a drive with high performance and power efficiency in a small form factor.
The Corsair MP700 Micro is everything you want from a drive – performance, power efficiency, and capacity – in a small form factor.
Pros
Up to a massive 4TB in 2242
High performance
Excellent power efficiency
Cons
-
Limited market
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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.
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.
Corsair MP700 Micro Software and Accessories
Corsair supports all its SSDs with the Corsair SSD Toolbox Windows application. This downloadable software package lets you check drive health and other information while hosting an array of potential drive features. These include overprovisioning, drive cloning, secure wipe/erase, and TRIM optimization. We recommend Clonezilla for other operating systems.
Corsair MP700 Micro: A Closer Look
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The MP700 Micro is a single-sided drive even at 4TB. This is the drive’s number one selling point in our mind, although it doesn’t hurt that it also has excellent hardware. Capacity often, and fairly, takes precedence in such a small form factor. A quick look at this drive tells you everything you need to know – if you want the peak for your M.2 2242 system, this is it.
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Higher performance is potentially possible, but given market trends, this is probably the drive to get it if you’re even thinking about getting an M.2 2242 solution any time soon. This drive can be used in longer slots with 2242 offsets or with an M.2 extender, and in some M.2 2230 systems with modifications, as well. While these might be niche cases, securing the drive now and temporarily using it as a standard drive is a completely feasible strategy.
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The drive is adorned with the Phison E31T SSD controller, Phison power management circuitry, and two NAND flash packages. The controller is one of our favorite, if not the favorite, DRAM-less options on the market. Corsair’s MP700 Elite uses the same controller in the M.2 2280 form factor, and we loved what we saw there. In both cases, the controller is paired with Kioxia’s 218-Layer BiCS8 TLC flash, which has delivered some of the best random read performance we’ve seen, in particular on SanDisk’s WD Black SN8100. This means you don’t have to compromise to get this much capacity in a short form factor. You’re not leaving performance or power efficiency on the table.
We would refer you to our linked reviews and our original Phison E31T preview if you want a more technical reading of the hardware. We do have some commentary for this review, though, namely that the old SMI-Phison rivalry has heated up again with SMI beating Phison to the market with its high-end SM2508, the same controller found on the Black SN8100. Phison has more recently gotten its E28 out onto the market with Corsair’s MP700 Pro XT, but it beat SMI to the punch with the E31T. While we’re leaning towards the E28 over the SM2508 at the very high end, in the middle, we think SMI’s SM2504XT has a ton of potential. The problem is that it’s not anywhere in retail yet. That means that a drive like the MP700 Micro remains in a class of its own.
Competition tends to be good for the consumer, and unfortunately, things aren’t too rosy on the flash end, either. The main competitor for BiCS8 is Micron’s 276-Layer TLC found most prominently on the Crucial T710. Micron recently announced a pivot away from consumer products toward enterprise AI, and its newest flash has been difficult to source for other manufacturers as of late. This means that the MP700 Micro’s flash is also as good as it gets right now, so competition will be minimal except for maybe direct copies from other brands. Corsair may have negotiated some exclusivity, or at least early access, well in advance to put itself in this position. However, it remains to be seen how long the supply of such a niche product will remain tenable.
