Lexar Play 2280 SSD review: Good for PCs, bad for PlayStation 5 [Video]

Price When Reviewed

4TB: $380

Best Prices Today: Lexar Play 2280 NVMe SSD

Lexar is marketing its Play 2280 SSD at the PlayStation crowd, and it certainly looks the part as you can see from photos. But the drive is seriously overpriced for the technology involved and hardly the “perfect” match for the PS5 as Lexar claims.

As you might deduce from the name, the Lexar Play 2280, is a 2280 form factor (22mm wide, 80mm long) NVMe SSD. It’s PCIe 4 x4, and uses fast, recent-vintage TLC NAND that’s controlled by a Maxio MAP1602A-FC3. That controller means the Play 2280 is a host memory buffer design — it uses your device’s system memory for primary caching.

Being a host memory buffer (HMB) design is not a bad thing per se. Indeed, HMB designs are highly competitive with DRAM designs in sequential transfers and usually far cheaper. Where HMB designs are generally slower is in random performance, but I still recommend them for …