Lexar SL500 2TB Portable SSD Review

Lexar's latest addition to quite an extensive range of portable SSDs is the compact SL500. The SL500 is the third Lexar drive to make use of a USB 3.2 Gen2 x 2 interface, joining the SL660 BLAZE Gaming and Professional SL600 drives. At the time of writing this review, there are only two models of the SL500 available, the 2TB drive we are looking at here and a 1TB drive. A 4TB version is due sometime in Q2.

The drive uses a Silicon Motion SM2320 controller with the built-in interface running at its full USB 3.2 Gen2 x 2 (20Gbps) speed. The SM2320 is a four-channel, single-chip USB 3.2 Gen2 x 2 solution which does away with the need for a bridging chip to make the interface work at full speeds. The controller comes in a tiny 9mm x 9mm package which together with the space saved by doing away with a bridge chip means that the SL500 is very compact, measuring just 85 x 54 x 7.8mm (more or less the size of a credit card) and weighing in at just 43g.

At the time of writing, we couldn't find what NAND the drive was using but other drives we've tested and reviewed with the SM2320 have been using 176-Layer 3D TLC NAND.

Lexar rates the drive as up to 2,000MB/s for reads and up to 1,800MB/s for writes. Using the ATTO and ASSSD benchmarks to test the drive we couldn't quite reach those official maximums with the best read/write scores for those two benchmarks coming from ATTO at 1,940MB/s and 1,777MB/s for reads and writes respectively. ASSSD scores were a little slower at 1,915MB/s for reads and 1,763MB/s for writes. Switching over to the CrystalDiskMark 8 benchmark we saw test results that confirmed the official maximums. The best read result we saw was 2,082MB/s (Peak Performance profile test, QD8 T1) while the best write result of 1,896MB/s came from the default test, again with QD8 T1 settings.

With our real-life file transfers we saw read performance go over the 2GB/s mark in seven out of the fourteen tests, the fastest being the  Windows 11 iso transfer at 2,080MB/s. Of the remaining seven tests, five topped 1GB/s. When it came to write performance twelve of the transfers were over 1GB/s with the fastest being the 100GB Data File at 1,873MB/s.

The SL500 is compatible with PC, Mac, Android devices, iPhone 15 series and gaming consoles. It is also compatible with Apple's Pro Res codec allowing video to be shot and saved straight to the drive at full 4K and 60FPS with an iPhone 15 Pro or Pro Max.

Pre-loaded on the drive is Lexar's DataShield software, which allows you to create a private safe on the drive to which you can drag and drop files. The safe is password protected and any files are automatically encrypted.

We found the 2TB Lexar SL500 on Amazon.co.uk for £178.99 (inc VAT) HERE.

Pros

• Fast performance.
• Design.
• DataShield software.
• Apple's Pro Res support.

Cons

• Couldn't quite hit the official maximum speeds with some of our testing.
• Needs a USB 3.2 Gen 2 x2 port to get the best performance out of it.

KitGuru says: Another very small but quick external SSD with loads of capacity and one which comes with the added benefit of a bundled utility to keep your files safe from harm using password protection and encryption.

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