I can barely imagine pulling together the inflated funds for a run-of-the-mill Gen 4 SSD, and yet Lexar has unveiled the new, ridiculously speedy Lexar Thor Ultra M/2 2280 Gen 5 SSDs to the US gaming public. Drives that are sure to require a Hulk-sized amount of cash when they eventually drop. See what I did there.
As reported by ItHome (via NotebookCheck), the Thor Ultra line-up of SSDs can achieve sequential read speeds of up to 11,000 MB/s and write speeds up to 10,000 MB/s, and will be available in capacities ranging from 512GB, 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB at launch. When will that be? Well, Lexar's official product page doesn't mention it quite yet, but I only hope it's sooner rather than later for those of you in the US after a Gen 5 SSD, as these are already steadily available here in the UK.
If you're based in the UK, you can already pick up the Lexar Thor Ultra line-up starting from £119.99 at Amazon for the 512GB model and £179.99 for the 1TB version.
Achieving read and write speeds of up to 11,000 and 10,000 MB/s is pretty mind-boggling, even for a Gen 5 drive. To put that into perspective, the Samsung 990 Pro, which our team dubbed the best SSD for gaming, achieved 7,462MB/s reads and 6,877MB/s writes in our review. That's pretty much the upper echelon of what a Gen 4 drive can achieve, and the Thor Ultra line achieves almost double.
It's not entirely unexpected, as Gen 5 drives are known for their ridiculous speedy performance, like the Crucial T700 Pro. In our review, it was able to reach sequential read and write speeds of 12,379 and 11,517 MB/s, which is even faster than this incoming Lexar SSD line. The thing is, Crucial has exited the business of providing storage options to general consumers like you and me, so pricing and availability can be all over the place.
The introduction of a new speedy Gen 5 lineup of drives is more than welcome in that respect, particularly as the Thor Ultra SSDs also have a 5-year warranty and an endurance rating of up to 3000 TBW. If you stick with the lower capacities like the 512 GB model, you'll have a 350 TBW at your disposal instead, which should still allow you to get your money's worth and have them last a lifetime, whatever that MSRP will be.
While Lexar hasn't yet divulged any US pricing or availability, do remember that you don't need to have a Gen 5 drive as part of your gaming rig. For one, your motherboard might not even have a compatible slot for it. But also, the differences in performance aren't that noticeable, all things considered.
They'll be noticeable if you're shifting large quantities of data, but every time our team has tested one of these speedy drives, we haven't found any modern games that benefit from or make use of its speedy capabilities. With that in mind, there's no shame in sticking with a Gen 4 alternative, should you find one at a price you're comfortable with as the RAM Storage Crisis rages on.
In the meantime, I'm currently testing the Lexar Play X SSD and should have a review up shortly if you're eager to see how it shapes up amongst other SSDs we've tested.
Want more storage options? Check out our guides to the best Xbox Series X hard drive, the best external hard drive for gaming, and the best Nintendo Switch 2 microSD Express cards.
