We were on to a great thing for a while. Last year, cheap SSDs were everywhere, with stunning deals on very fast and very large Gen 4 drives. Now though, they're increasingly hard to find, but that doesn't mean we don't spot the odd bargain every now and then.
Like this 2 TB Nextorage NEM-PA, on sale at Newegg right now for $136. It might not have the brand recognition of WD or Lexar, but trust me when I say that this Nextorage drive actually has far more pedigree than you might expect.
Nextorage was originally created by Sony to manufacture SSDs for the PlayStation 5. However, Phison, an absolute heavyweight name in the SSD business, bought itself a controlling stake in the company. As a result, Nextorage started creating drives using the Phison E18 controller, as found here, making for SSDs with excellent performance from a name that's increasingly becoming familiar to those in the know.
The proof here lies in the performance. This Nextorage 2 TB drive delivers 7,300 MB/s reads and 6,900 MB/s writes, making for a fantastically fast performer as we found in our review. That's thanks to 2 TB of high-quality TLC NAND memory and 2 GB of DDR4 cache in combination with that legendary controller.
It's not quite the fastest of Gen 4 drives—particularly when it comes to 4K writes—but it still delivers performance that puts it up there with some seriously heavy competition. This model also comes with a substantial heatsink, which keeps it cool for sustained performance.
About that. While you can technically remove the heatsink to install the NEM-PA in a laptop, Nextorage will not guarantee the warranty after disassembly. I would suggest those of you looking to squeeze the drive into somewhere heatsink-inappropriate might want to consider the warranty implications before doing so.
Still, what you get here is a sizeable drive with excellent Gen 4 performance, with a significant discount to boot. It's worth mentioning that Amazon Prime Day is right around the corner, technically starting on Tuesday July 16 and carrying on through Wednesday July 17, although we've already started collecting early Amazon Prime Day SSD deals.
This drive is one of them and while there's always a chance it might drop lower, if you need fast storage right now I reckon it's an excellent shout for $136.
