Author: AnandTech
Lexar has a long history of serving the flash-based consumer storage market in the form of SSDs, memory cards, and USB flash drives. After having started out as a Micron brand, the company was acquired in 2017 by Longsys which has diversified its product lineup with regular introduction of new products. Recently, the company announced a number of portable SSDs targeting different market segments. The Lexar ARMOR 700 Portable SSD makes its entry as the new flagship in the 20 Gbps PSSD segment.
Despite its flagship positioning and rugged nature, the ARMOR 700 is reasonably priced thanks to the use of a native USB flash controller – the Silicon Motion SM2320. Similar to the SL500, the product uses YMTC 3D TLC NAND (compared to the usual Micron or BiCS NAND that we have seen in SM2320-based PSSDs from other vendors). This review takes a detailed look at the ARMOR 700, including an analysis of its internals and evaluation of its performance consistency, power consumption, and thermal profile.
External bus-powered storage devices have been growing in storage capacity as well as access speeds over the last decade. Advancements in flash technology (such as the advent of 3D NAND and NVMe) and the evolution of faster host interfaces (such as Thunderbolt 3 and USB 3.x / USB4). As a result, we have been seeing palm-sized flash-based storage devices capable of delivering 3GBps+ speeds. While those speeds can be achieved with Thunderbolt 4, mass-market devices have to rely on USB. Within the USB ecosystem, USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) is fast becoming the entry level for thumb drives and portable SSDs. USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 (20 Gbps) got off to a slow start, but recent computing platforms from both Intel and AMD have started to support it on the host side. The introduction of native USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 flash controllers such as the Phison U18 and Silicon Motion SM2320 has enabled PSSD vendors to bring low-cost power-efficient 20 Gbps external drives to the market.
Broadly speaking, there are currently five distinct performance levels in the PSSD market:
- 2GBps+ drives with Thunderbolt 3 or USB4, using NVMe SSDs
- 2GBps drives with USB 3.2 Gen 2×2, using NVMe SSDs or direct USB flash drive (UFD) controllers
- 1GBps drives with USB 3.2 Gen 2, using NVMe SSDs or direct UFD controllers
- 500MBps drives with USB 3.2 Gen 1 (or, Gen 2, in some cases), using SATA SSDs
- Sub-400MBps drives with USB 3.2 Gen 1, using UFD controllers
Within each of these levels, there is further segmentation into entry-level, mid-range, and premium based on the choice of internal components. The Lexar ARMOR 700 we are looking at today falls under the second category. Lexar touts the rugged nature (IP66 rating) along with class-leading speeds as key selling points. The packaging itself is spartan – we have a discrete Type-C to Type-C cable, along with an user guide. The Type-C cable has a permanently attached Type-C to Type-A adapter that can be put together (as shown in the picture below) for use with Type-A host ports.
While the casing is metal, it comes with a rubber sleeve to impart the necessary water and dust resistance. Unlike the SL500, there are four screws hidden under the coverings on the side with the Type-C port and the one opposite to it. Removal of the screws allows the plastic trays holding the circuit board to be pulled out. While the SL500 opted to keep the board in place under tabs in the tray, the ARMOR 700 uses four screws for this purpose.
The components on the board of the ARMOR 700 are very similar to the one in the SL500, but the board itself is slightly wider to encompass the full width of the frame (and also provide space for the screw holes). The gallery below presents some insights into the case design and internals of the PSSD. Comparing against the teardown pictures of the SL500, we see the main difference being the addition of a waterproofing rubber seal in the plastic tray, and a rubber band around the Type-C port to prevent water and dust ingress.
Gallery: Lexar ARMOR 700 Portable SSD Teardown
Similar to the SL500, the board does not have any explicit thermal solution – no thermal pads or conducting paths to the external casing from either the controller or flash packages. The SM2320 UFD controller is directly visible on the board.
The 2TB version includes four flash packages in a double-sided configuration. The packages are from Longsys themselves with no obvious indication of the NAND inside (except for the 512G at the end of the part number, indicating 512 GB per package). Fortunately, we have a publicly available NAND decoder tool for Silicon Motion PSSDs, and that reveals the use of YMTC’s 128L 3D TLC inside the packages. While the NAND used is the same as the one in the SL500 sample reviewed earlier, it is just that the per-package capacity is different.
This review compares the Lexar ARMOR 700 against a host of other 2GBps-class PSSDs we have reviewed before. An overview of the internal capabilities of these PSSDs is given by CrystalDiskInfo. The ARMOR 700 supports full S.M.A.R.T passthrough, along with TRIM to ensure consistent performance for the drive over its lifetime.
Comparative Direct-Attached Storage Devices Configuration
Aspect
Downstream Port
Native Flash
Native Flash
Upstream Port
USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 Type-C (Female)
USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 Type-C (Female)
Bridge Chip
Silicon Motion SM2320
Silicon Motion SM2320
Power
Bus Powered
Bus Powered
Use Case
2GBps-class, IP66-rated, rugged palm-sized high-performance portable SSD with hardware encryption and a Type-C interface
2GBps-class, sleek and stylish palm-sized high-performance portable SSD with hardware encryption and a Type-C interface
Physical Dimensions
86.2 mm x 54.4 mm x 13.2 mm
85 mm x 54 mm x (4.5 to 7.8) mm
Weight
80 grams
43 grams
Cable
30 cm USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C to Type-C
Attached Type-C female to Type-A male adapter (resultant Type-C to Type-A cable length : 31.8 cm)
30 cm USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 Type-C (male) to Type-C (male)
S.M.A.R.T Passthrough
Yes
Yes
UASP Support
Yes
Yes
TRIM Passthrough
Yes
Yes
Hardware Encryption
Yes
Yes
Evaluated Storage
YMTC 128L 3D TLC (packaged by Longsys)
YMTC 128L 3D TLC (packaged by Longsys)
Review Link
Lexar ARMOR 700 2TB Review
Lexar SL500 1TB Review
Similar to the SL500, the Lexar ARMOR 700 also supports 256-bit AES encryption using Lexar’s custom password-protection software (that needs to be installed on all machines that need access to the contents).
Prior to looking at the benchmark numbers, power consumption, and thermal solution effectiveness, a description of the testbed setup and evaluation methodology is provided.
Testbed Setup and Evaluation Methodology
Direct-attached storage devices (including thumb drives) are evaluated using the Quartz Canyon NUC (essentially, the Xeon / ECC version of the Ghost Canyon NUC) configured with 2x 16GB DDR4-2667 ECC SODIMMs and a PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe SSD – the IM2P33E8 1TB from ADATA.
The most attractive aspect of the Quartz Canyon NUC is the presence of two PCIe slots (electrically, x16 and x4) for add-in cards. In the absence of a discrete GPU – for which there is no need in a DAS testbed – both slots are available. In fact, we also added a spare SanDisk Extreme PRO M.2 NVMe SSD to the CPU direct-attached M.2 22110 slot in the baseboard in order to avoid DMI bottlenecks when evaluating Thunderbolt 3 devices. This still allows for two add-in cards operating at x8 (x16 electrical) and x4 (x4 electrical). Since the Quartz Canyon NUC doesn’t have a native USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 port, Silverstone’s SST-ECU06 add-in card was installed in the x4 slot. All non-Thunderbolt devices are tested using the Type-C port enabled by the SST-ECU06.
The specifications of the testbed are summarized in the table below:
The 2021 AnandTech DAS Testbed Configuration
System
Intel Quartz Canyon NUC9vXQNX
CPU
Intel Xeon E-2286M
Memory
ADATA Industrial AD4B3200716G22
32 GB (2x 16GB)
DDR4-3200 ECC @ 22-22-22-52
OS Drive
ADATA Industrial IM2P33E8 NVMe 1TB
Secondary Drive
SanDisk Extreme PRO M.2 NVMe 3D SSD 1TB
Add-on Card
SilverStone Tek SST-ECU06 USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 Type-C Host
OS
Windows 10 Enterprise x64 (21H1)
Thanks to ADATA, Intel, and SilverStone Tek for the build components
The testbed hardware is only one segment of the evaluation. Over the last few years, the typical direct-attached storage workloads for memory cards have also evolved. High bit-rate 4K videos at 60fps have become quite common, and 8K videos are starting to make an appearance. Game install sizes have also grown steadily even in portable game consoles, thanks to high resolution textures and artwork. Keeping these in mind, our evaluation scheme for portable SSDs and UFDs involves multiple workloads which are described in detail in the corresponding sections.
- Synthetic workloads using CrystalDiskMark and ATTO
- Real-world access traces using PCMark 10’s storage benchmark
- Custom robocopy workloads reflective of typical DAS usage
- Sequential write stress test
In the next section, we have an overview of the performance of the Lexar ARMOR 700 in these benchmarks. Prior to providing concluding remarks, we have some observations on the PSSD’s power consumption numbers and thermal solution also.
Benchmarks such as ATTO and CrystalDiskMark help provide a quick look at the performance of the direct-attached storage device. The results translate to the instantaneous performance numbers that consumers can expect for specific workloads, but do not account for changes in behavior when the unit is subject to long-term conditioning and/or thermal throttling. Yet another use of these synthetic benchmarks is the ability to gather information regarding support for specific storage device features that affect performance.
Lexar claims read and write speeds of 2000 MBps, but the ATTO benchmarks below do not back that up. ATTO benchmarking is restricted to a single configuration in terms of queue depth, and is only representative of a small sub-set of real-world workloads. It does allow the visualization of change in transfer rates as the I/O size changes, with optimal write performance being reached around 512 KB for a queue depth of 4.
The ARMOR 700 makes its mark in the lower half of the pack in the overall PCMark 10 Storage Bench scores, just ahead of the SL500. There are SM2320-based PSSDs both above and below the ARMOR 700, with the SDP PRO-BLADE being the leader (thanks to its DRAM-equipped internal SSD).
The performance of the PSSDs in various real-world access traces as well as synthetic workloads was brought out in the preceding sections. We also looked at the performance consistency for these cases. Power users may also be interested in performance consistency under worst-case conditions, as well as drive power consumption. The latter is also important when used with battery powered devices such as notebooks and smartphones. Pricing is also an important aspect. We analyze each of these in detail below.
Worst-Case Performance Consistency
Flash-based storage devices tend to slow down in unpredictable ways when subject to a large number of small-sized random writes. Many benchmarks use that scheme to pre-condition devices prior to the actual testing in order to get a worst-case representative number. Fortunately, such workloads are uncommon for direct-attached storage devices, where workloads are largely sequential in nature. Use of SLC caching as well as firmware caps to prevent overheating may cause drop in write speeds when a flash-based DAS device is subject to sustained sequential writes.
Our Sequential Writes Performance Consistency Test configures the device as a raw physical disk (after deleting configured volumes). A fio workload is set up to write sequential data to the raw drive with a block size of 128K and iodepth of 32 to cover 90% of the drive capacity. The internal temperature is recorded at either end of the workload, while the instantaneous write data rate and cumulative total write data amount are recorded at 1-second intervals.
CrystalDiskMark Workloads – Power Consumption
TOP:
BOTTOM:
Despite the firmware differences, the power consumption profile is remarkably similar for all the 2TB SM2320-based PSSDs. The SL500 with its lower capacity has slightly lower absolute peak numbers (3W vs. 4W), but all the SM2320 PSSDs spend most of the active time around the 2W mark. Unlike the LaCie Rugged Mini, the Lexar ARMOR 700 does have a true deep sleep mode after idling for around 20 minutes.
Final Words
The Lexar ARMOR 700 was introduced at CES 2024 along with a host of other PSSD solutions. Lexar’s Silicon Motion SM2320-based solutions like the ARMOR 700 and SL500 differentiate themselves from others in two aspects – usage of YMTC’s 128L 3D TLC and the availability of hardware encryption support. The company seems to be targeting different capacities for different markets. The US market currently seems to only have the 2TB SKU available for $210. With prices of flash-based storage in a flux, it is not possible to make any comments on the value proposition of the Lexar ARMOR 700. However, based on current prices, the Crucial X10 Pro 2TB at $175 and the the LaCie Rugged Mini 2TB at $190 seem to offer better value for money. That said, the case design of the ARMOR 700 is subjectively more pleasing than either alternative. It also feels much more solid in hand compared to the X10 Pro, while also being smaller in size compared to the Rugged Mini.
(L) Lexar SL500 (R) Lexar ARMOR 700
Our only quibble with the Lexar ARMOR 700 is the absence of a credible thermal solution. Having configured the firmware for higher peak speeds compared to the SL500, Lexar could have optimized the thermal solution to take full advantage of it, but that is unfortunately not the case. Lexar does have a gamer-focused 2GBps-class PSSD in the older SL660 BLAZE with thermal pads, but it uses older flash (similar to the one in the Kingston XS2000) and is not as performant as the ARMOR 700.
7.8TB+ writes, and 4.5TB+ reads at the end of our testing routine
The design of the casing is subjectively much better than almost all of the other SM2320-based PSSDs, and the ruggedness / IP66 rating is the icing on the cake. The SLC cache size at around 100 GB is acceptable for most consumer / casual user workloads. In any case, the direct-to-TLC writes are also quite good at 1.4 GBps (thermals permitting). Overall, this is a win for direct-attached storage workloads. On the general usage front, the random access numbers and the behavior for mixed workloads are a bit off – but it is unfair for consumers to expected native controller solutions to perform as well as bridge-based solutions using DRAM-equipped SSDs in that aspect. Overall, the Lexar ARMOR 700 shows the flexibility offered by Silicon Motion’s SM2320 solution in good light. Depending on the exact use-case, consumers may find it a good alternative to the Lexar SL500, Crucial X10 Pro, LaCie Rugged Mini, or the Kingston XS2000.