CES 2024: Lexar gets into gaming

Lexar is best-known for its flash memory cards and drives, but it has become clear that there are very specific user communities who can benefit more than most from such solutions: photographers, videographers and gamers. Why? Simple: they don’t only have greater storage and data transfer needs than most, but often have those needs in the moment, as they are capturing images, recording videos or playing and saving games.

As a result, Lexar is showcasing a lineup of new products at CES 2024 in Las Vegas this week ranging from “tried-and-true professional photography and videography portfolio to its robust gaming line-up and portable storage”.

Most notably, from a gamer’s perspective, Lexar has unveiled the professional NM1090 M.2 PCIe Gen 5 NVMe SSD with Heatsink. It is a solid-state drive featuring PCIe Gen 5 performance with maximum read speeds of 12,000MB/s and maximum write speeds of 11,000MB/s. This makes it nearly twice as fast as PCIe Gen 4.

Lexar is also demonstrating the NM800 PRO M.2 2280 NVMe SSD and its newest iteration, the NM800 PRO, which includes an integrated heatsink, with capacities up to 8TB. Then there is the Play M.2 2230 PCIe 4.0 SSD, which lexar says “packs big performance into a small form factor that is perfect for handheld gaming consoles and M.2 2230 compatible laptops”. It delivers maximum read speeds of 5200MB/s and maximum write speeds of 4700MB/s, and leverages SLC dynamic cache to keep load times and downloads fast. 

Finally, in the gaming department, Lexar is showcasing its blazing-fast gaming DRAM, the ARES RGB DDR5, which clocks in at 8400MT/s and with timing as low as CL40, according to the company.

Other storage solutions being showcased at CES 2024, according to Lexar, are:

• Its cutting-edge Professional CFexpress 4.0 Type B Card Diamond Series which leverages the latest PCIe Gen 4 for the powerful performance and accelerated post-production efficiencies that professionals demand—a blistering-fast max. read speed of 3600MB/s and max. write of 3300MB/s.
• The Professional CFexpress 4.0 Type A Card Gold Series. It also utilises PCIe Gen 4 technology and is the world’s fastest CFexpress Type A card with max. read speeds of 1800MB/s and max. write speeds of 1650MB/s. 
• The Professional Gold microSD UHS-II Card recommended by GoPro for use with their action cameras. It delivers max. read speeds of 280MB/s and max. write speeds of 180MB/s and comes in capacities up to 256GB.
• A Portable SSD lineup, including Armor 700 and SL500, delivering excellent durability and reliability. The Armor 700 Portable SSD, ranging from 1TB to 4TB, combines IP66 water and dust resistance with a rugged design capable of withstanding a 3-meter drop. The SL500 portable SSD, powered by Silicon Motion Technology portable SSD controllers, with speeds up to 2000MB/s read and 1800MB/s write. Its sleek aluminum design offers easy portability, while its wide compatibility makes it suitable for mobile devices, laptops, cameras, Xbox, PlayStation, and more. It especially supports 4K 60FPS ProRes Apple Log video recording on the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max.

* CES, formerly the Consumer Electronics Show, is one of the most influential tech events in the world, serving as the launchpad for several thousand new products every January in Las Vegas. It is owned and produced by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), and features every aspect of the tech sector.