The Team Group M33 is a branded version of the Phison reference design for the versatile E13T controller designed for not just M.2, but also CFX and BGA (single chip) form factors. It's also 100% identical to the MyDigitalSSD SBXe, and probably other models using the controller, which should make it easier to find the drive online.

This is our first review of an SSD with the Phison PS5013-E13, and I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised with what this low-cost DRAM-less design can achieve. Synthetic results are all good, especially the random read IOPS values are worth highlighting—important for read-heavy consumer workloads. Sequential speeds are excellent, too. Despite being a DRAM-less design, random writes are better than expected. We took a closer look at that and found that the MP33 handles random writes significantly better than any other DRAM-less SSD we tested before. IOPS even match SSDs with DRAM cache when write activity focuses on an area size below a few GB. Only once the area size is increased substantially, above 20 GB, does the WD Blue NVMe do a bit better. The only synthetic test with a weak result is mixed random IO. This mixed test scenario is important because your SSD is highly unlikely to always only see either read or write activity. On a modern OS some background task is almost always using the disk, and the controller has to deal with that, too.

In our real-life performance testing, the MP33 ends up being the slowest M.2 NVMe drive, but the differences to competing models are tiny. For example, the value-oriented Intel 660p and WD Blue SN500 NVMe are just 1% and 2% faster, respectively. Crucial's QLC-based P1 is 5% faster, and the fastest NVMe drives in our test group are 13% quicker. Unsurprisingly, the MP33 is having difficulties with our WinRAR extraction benchmark, which is a typical real-life situation where random write performance matters. A surprisingly positive highlight is Steam game unpacking, where the SSD is the fastest drive we ever tested.

Just like all other modern SSDs, the MP33 comes with pseudo-SLC caching, which has the ability to soak up bursts of write activity and flush them to TLC flash later, when the drive is idle. With a capacity of 25 GB, the cache is reasonably sized, but it could be a little bit bigger in my opinion. What's highly impressive is that even when the controller is writing to TLC directly, write rates don't fall off a cliff. We've been seeing TLC write speeds of a few hundred MB/s in the past—the MP33 does much better. It sustains a write rate of over 1.4 GB/s at all times, which is highly impressive, and the second best TLC-based SSD result we've ever seen.

Thermals are just as impressive because of the new Phison controller. It seems Phison found a way to reduce the heat output of their chip considerably. In our highly demanding thermal throttle test, this is the first solid-state-drive without a heatsink that never encountered any slowdowns from overheating. Software temperature reporting is about 20°C off because Phison reports flash chip temperature and not the controller itself. Not a big deal, it is still good to know.

With $78 for the tested 512 GB version, pricing isn't unreasonable, but still a few dollars too high to really disrupt the current market. At this price point there are plenty of alternatives that have higher performance, some even with a DRAM cache chip to avoid slowdowns in demanding random write scenarios, which are quite rare for consumer usage, though. Strong competition comes from the WD Blue SN500 NVMe SSD, which costs $70, the Crucial P1 at $75, and the ADATA SX8200 Pro at $80. On the other hand, if you're considering a SATA SSD and have a spare M.2 slot, definitely go for M.2—the MP33 easily beats any SATA SSD on the market.

Team Group includes a five-year warranty with the MP33, which is almost the norm nowadays, as showing confidence in your product is important to customers. Our review sample's sticker still reads "3 years." I'm assuming this particular drive was made before the decision to implement a 5-year warranty. All online resources also state that the warranty is five years. I've reached out to Team Group and they confirm that the warranty is five years.