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It’s hard to describe any SSD these days as “budget,” but you will currently save quite a few bucks with this DRAM-less (HMB/Host Memory Buffer) design. Once available at 2TB for $150, that drive is now $285. Thanks, OpenAI. That said, the SN5100, now remonikered as the SanDisk Optimus 5100, is still available which can’t be said for a lot of the competition. The WD Blue SN5100 is the successor to our former bargain pick — the WD Blue SN5000. The newer drive does better in most tests, most markedly in sustained/sequential throughput. At the moment, the pricing is exactly the same, so we say go

To reiterate, the GX 7100M (Mini?) is a 2230 (22mm wide, 30mm long) form factor, PCIe 4.0/NVMe 2.0 SSD. The controller is Sandisk in-house and the NAND is layered TLC (Triple-Level Cell/3-bit). The drive is an HMB (Host Memory Buffer) design that uses some of your system memory (typically 64MB to 72MB) as primary cache. A healthy portion of the NAND (at least 25 percent from our testing) is employed as secondary cache by writing to it as if it were on/off 1-bit SLC (Single-Level Cell). In case you weren’t aware, the “level” in NAND nomenclature actually refers to the number of bits a cell can

You’re probably not going to like this… I didn’t. But the Optimus GX 7100M is roughly $240 in the 1TB flavor, and $450 at 2TB. Even given today’s high SSD prices, that’s an ask and a half. If the drive weren’t such an excellent performer, I might ding Sandisk for it. But it is super fast, and the best always costs more.

How fast? Very. The 2TB GX 7100M that Sandisk sent us finished first among all the PCIe 4.0 SSDs (of any form factor) we’ve tested. So while its pricing is daunting, your cash, again, does buy you the best. At first I was hesitant to compare the PCIe 4.0 GX 7100M to the PCIe 5.0 Corsair MP700 Micro, but darned if it didn’t match its rival in many tests and whomp it in CrystalDiskMark 8’s 4K tests. Not to bang on Corsair, but the MP700 Micro is not nearly as fast as most PCIe 5.0 SSDs. Below, you can see just how close in performance the GX 7100M was to the MP700 Micro. The latter is faster, bu