Crucial P310 2230 Gen4x4 M.2 NVMe SSD Review – The BEST Steam Deck/ROG Ally/Handheld SSD

Crucial is aiming their brand new P310 2230 sized M.2 NVMe SSD at the handheld game console market – things like the Steam Deck and the ROG Ally, amongst the myriad of others now on the market. This might just be the perfect drive for them, and in this video I’ll explain why, we will test it out to see how good it really is, and by the end of it should you know if this tiny little thing is for you. Let’s jump straight in with a look at the practically microscopic drive. 

Physically, the P310 measures in at 22mm wide and 30mm long, hence the 2230 designation. Importantly for devices like the Steam Deck though, it is single sided – something not all 2230 drives offer. That does mean you don’t have much space on here for things like a DRAM cache – what you do get is a Phison E27 controller and one package of Micron’s 232L 3D NAND flash – that is either a 1TB or 2TB package which I find really impressive that they can fit 2TB of storage into a single NAND flash package. As an aside, one of the features Crucial lists for this drive is RAIN – redundant array of independent NAND. This is exactly what you think it is – just like RAID for hard drives, but in-NAND. Basically, the drive makes parity calculations on the data, and potentially duplicates data, to ensure that even if part of the NAND dies, you won’t lose data. What’s more impressive is that this doesn’t result in less usable space for you – both this drive and most other 2TB SSDs I have all report 1.81TB of usable space in Windows. That’s really cool – and that’s on top of ECC support too.

As for speeds, Crucial claims this’ll hit 7.1GB/s reads and 6GB/s writes – putting it up there with some of the fastest Gen4x4 drives – and even lists an impressive 440 TBW endurance rating for this 2TB drive, to compliment the 5 year warranty. Of course, at least on the speed front what manufacturers claim is always the best case numbers, so let’s take a look at how it performs, both in synthetic benchmarks like AS SSD, ATTO Disk Benchmark and Crystal Disk Mark, and in a more real world file transfer and duplication test. Starting with the synthetics, Crystal Disk Mark reckons you’ll get 6.77GB/s reads and actually better-than-advertised 6.3GB/s writes, at least on sequential transfers with a queue depth of 8. At Q1 it isn’t as good, down at 3.6GB/s reads and 5.5GB/s writes, and as always the random 4KB blocks, even at a high queue depth, are lower again at 800MB/s read and 560MB/s write. Compared to other Gen4x4 drives that is pretty much on point – it’s faster than the Solidigm P44 Pro, and thoroughly trounces the drive I use in my Steam Deck, the Kioxia BG4. I think what’s most impressive here is the lack of a DRAM cache doesn’t seem to have bothered the P310, as it offers solid Gen4x4 performance regardless. That’s really cool. 

AS SSD has the P310 in the upper pack, again matching some full-fat, full-speed Gen4x4 drives like the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus G – despite the P310’s diminutive size. What’s more impressive here is the 4K random – where the P310 is the single fastest drive I’ve tested in both reads AND writes, and especially on the writes front, not by a small margin. Over 50MB/s faster than the next fastest, and the reads are a couple MB/s faster too. That is incredibly impressive, especially from such a small drive. Whatever black magic Crucial and Micron have in here, you should want it. 

Lastly for the synthetics, ATTO Disk Benchmark. This, again, shows the P310 to be in the upper echelons of Gen4x4 drives, holding its own above the Solidigm P44 Pro, and miles above the Kioxia BG4 – admittedly that is a Gen 3 drive and impressive in its own right being a single chip design – and of course thoroughly trouncing the Samsung 970 EVO Plus, and while not included here, the 980 Pro too. It even offers pack-leading performance at 32KB and 64KB block sizes, especially on reads. 

On the more real world front, I like to do a file duplication stress test, duplicating a large dataset of files to stress reads and writes simultaneously, and I keep doing that until the SLC cache runs out to see the revert speed. The P310 again did chart topping performance here, running at a very constant 2.3GB/s. For context, the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus G PEAKED at 2.19GB/s, but bounced around more like 2GB/s, so the P310 running at a very stable 2.3GB/s is incredible. Hell, it peaked at around 3GB/s, which again is phenomenal performance for any drive, let alone one this small. As for when the SLC cache ran out, that was after around 350GB of data (all at once mind you), with a revert rate anywhere between 500MB/s and 200MB/s depending on the file size being transferred. That’s pretty typical for essentially bare-NAND transfers, and again that only really happens when you are transferring hundreds of gigabytes at a time – unlike Samsung drives which can often be more like tens of gigabytes. 

All in all, on the performance front anyway, this P310 is an exceptional drive, and not just in its size class. This is about as good as a Gen4x4 drive as you can expect, full stop. That fact you get that sort of performance in a 2230 form factor, with no visible DRAM cache too, is just incredible. As for pricing, Crucial has listed the 2TB version at $215, and the 1TB version at $115, which is decently in line with the other 2230 drives on the market, and seeing as this fits perfectly in a Steam Deck or ROG Ally, if you’re after a new drive for that sort of handheld, I can definitely recommend the P310. Now if you’ll excuse me I need to get my iFixit kit to crack open my deck and stick this bad boy in here…