Photos and Features
The box for the Lexar NM710 has the same layout and design as the last few Lexar SSDs that we have had come into the office. The big change however from the other drives is the background color. The Lexar Pro drives have had a black background with gold trim and the NM620 had a black background with silver trim. This time around however Laxar has gone with something brighter, the Lexar NM710 has a light blue background and an even lighter blue on the top edge for the trim. Like the other drives, there is a large picture of the drive in the center which is always nice. Up top, they have the Lexar logo and the NM710 model name in large fonts. Below the model name they also mention that this is an M.2 2280 length drive, NVMe, and the drive is PCIe Gen 4x4 which is important to know as well. Then at the bottom they have the drive speed as being up to 5000 MB/s read speed and the capacity is there but with a sticker. You can get the Lexar NM710 in 500 GB, 1TB, and 2TB models, our drive is the middle-sized 1TB option. The back of the box lists out the drive information again including the speed and also the Lexar logo all at the top. They do highlight features mentioning the PCIe Gen 4x4 standard and overall speed as well as being built to last because it has no moving parts. Good to know if this is your first SSD. Then they have a window that lets you see the sticker on the drive to scan the serial number and confirm the drive capacity as well. The biggest piece of information on the back of the box is a small logo for the 5-year warranty down at the bottom.
When you open the box up the Lexar NM710 comes in a clear plastic clamshell tray. They also include a small M.2 screw which Lexar is the only one I see doing this but it is always a welcome addition, those screws are easy to lose and hard to dig out of the motherboard box if it isn’t already installed on your board. You also get a small standard installation guide that also has the warranty legal information as well.
Like with the packaging, the Lexar NM710 itself has a similar blue theme with a sticker across the top. Past Lexar drives have had this same two-tone look but the Lexar NM710 is the first to go with blue on the top but it does go well together. The blue has the 710 model name peaking out as well as the full NM710 in a smaller font in the black as well as the Lexar logo. Up close you can see that the blue is striped at an angle with two different shades of blue. Then around on the back, there is a second two-tone sticker, this time with blue and white. This has the drive name and logo again but then below that in the white they have printed on the drive capacity, part number, and serial number including barcode and QR codes. It also has the normal certification logos on this side as well.
The Lexar NM710 has nothing on the back of the drive so there was no need to take a look there. But for the top side, I did want to check out what components Lexar is using. It has four NAND chips on the left. Then past a few resisters, the next chip is the Maxio MAP1602A controller. There isn’t any RAM meaning they are running this DRAM-Less using SLC Cache. Then for the four NAND chips, they are branded Longsys which is who owns Lexar and have the model name RH14TAA1442256G. They are 3D TLC and are similar to or a rebrand of the Micron B47R. Our 1TB capacity uses all four NAND locations meaning they are 256GB each for this drive but they use a larger 512GB capacity chip for the 2TB model. The hardly visible PCB is black and the drive layout has the controller over by the M.2 slot which will keep the heat over on that side with a gap between them.
