Micron SSD 2400: First 30 mm M.2 SSD with 2 TB capacity

Micron has introduced a new SSD series which also comes in the M.2330 form factor and has a length of only 30 millimeters. The Micron SSD 2400 even comes with a capacity of 2 terabytes.

Micron SSD 2400: With PCIe 4.0 and 30 cm length

The new Micron SSD 2400 series comes in its smallest version with a length of only 30 millimeters. Besides the M.2230 format, however, the SSD is also offered in M.2242 (42 cm length) and the familiar M.2280 format with 80 mm length.

The smallest version is a novelty, as correspondingly short M.2 SSDs have only been offered with a maximum of 1 TB capacity and with PCIe 3.0 connection so far. Micron, on the other hand, relies on PCIe 4.0 and up to 2 TB of storage space.

The disadvantage in the compact size is the use of QLC NAND flash, which stores four bits per cell (Quadruple Level Cells) and a quite slow storage rate – at least outside the pseudo-SLC cache, which is specified with 1 bit per cell. Micron relies on the latest NAND flash generation with 176 memory layers in the 2400 series.

The performance of the Micron SSD 2400

Here, the 2 TB model of the Micron SSD 2400 manages speeds of 4 GBytes/s for writing and 4.5 GBytes/s for reading thanks to PCIe 4.0. The 1 TB model still achieves 3.6 GB/s write and 4.5 Gbyte/s read.

Only the 512 GB model is much slower. Here, only 1.8 GByte/s are achieved during writing. Nevertheless, 400,000 to 700,000 IOPS are achieved depending on the model.  Depending on the model, 150 to 600 TBytes (Total Bytes Written) are also achieved, which is a rather low lifetime typical for a QLC-SSD.

At least the power consumption in idle mode, when the SSD is not busy with a write or read operation, turns out pleasingly low at 0.15 watts.

Where are M.2230 SSDs used?

The extremely compact, only 30 cm long, M.2230-SSDs are mainly used in small notebooks or tablets, such as Microsoft’s Surface Pro 7+ and Surface Laptop 3. However, Valve’s handheld Steam Deck also relies on a corresponding storage solution, which is currently mostly manufactured by Kioxia (BG4 series).

However, with maximum read speeds of 2.3 GB/s and write speeds of 1.8 GB/s, they are significantly slower than the new Micron SSD 2400, for which neither a price nor a launch date could be mentioned so far.