Package and Contents

Inside the package you will find the SSD itself, a USB Type-C cable, and a cable with a standard USB (Type-A) port.

The Drive

The SL100 Pro is very compact, with a stylish, clean look.


A single USB-C port lets you connect to the drive. Note the small LED to the left of the connector. It lights up when the drive is powered on and also serves as a disk activity indicator by turning off the LED while data is accessed.

Disassembly

Taking the drive apart, we see that Lexar has fully integrated their SSD design onto a single PCB. Other vendors simply put a regular M.2 SSD onto an adapter PCB and stuff that into their external enclosures, which results in a larger physical size.


On the PCB we find two flash chips, the controller, and the PCIe-to-USB bridge chip. A DRAM chip is not present.


The 4-channel dual-core flash controller is made by Marvell and supports operation without an additional DRAM chip.


The two flash chips are branded Lexar, but they definitely come out of Intel/Micron's fab. They are 64-layer 3D TLC NAND, of which each has a capacity of 256 GB.


The JMicron's JMS583 controller was one of the first ICs that could handle full-speed USB 3.2 Gen 2 10 Gbps. It supports USB 3.2 Gen 2 on the USB side and PCI-Express x2 3.0 for attached devices.