Team Group 1TB SSD PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe M.2 2280

The MP44 is a budget drive that punches way above its weight class, hitting 7400 MB/s reads without breaking the bank. Just verify the capacity when it arrives and hope you don't need customer support.

The sequential speeds are the headline here, and they're legit. 7400 MB/s read and 6500 MB/s write put this drive in the 90th percentile for speed, which is wild for a DRAM-less design. Random performance is also strong at 650K IOPS, landing in the 89th percentile. The SLC cache does a lot of heavy lifting, and in real-world use you'll see fast boot times and snappy game loads. But the endurance story is more middle-of-the-pack at 500 TBW, and the lack of DRAM means sustained writes can dip once the cache fills up. Still, for most people, this thing feels fast.

The MP44 goes head to head with drives like the Samsung 990 EVO Plus and the Kingston Fury Renegade. The Samsung is more polished with better software support and a longer warranty, but it typically costs more. The Kingston Fury Renegade has DRAM and better sustained performance, making it a better choice for heavy workstation use. The Crucial T700 is a Gen5 drive that's in a completely different performance class, but you'll pay a premium for it. For pure gaming and everyday use, the MP44 holds its own against all of them at a lower price.

This is where the MP44 shines. At the US pricing of $180-189, it's a steal for a drive with this level of performance. The EUR pricing is all over the place though, ranging from EUR 218 to EUR 355 depending on the vendor. If you're in Europe, shop around. The EUR 218 listing is a fantastic deal, but at EUR 355 you're paying way too much for what you get. At the right price, this drive is hard to beat.

The Team Group MP44 is one of those drives that makes you wonder why you'd spend more. It's a DRAM-less PCIe 4.0 drive that still manages to hit 7400 MB/s reads and 6500 MB/s writes, which puts it in the top tier of Gen4 drives we've tracked. For a budget-focused SSD, those numbers are genuinely impressive. The catch? Quality control seems to be a bit of a lottery, with a handful of buyers reporting wrong capacities and early failures.

If you're doing heavy video editing or running a workstation with constant large file transfers, the DRAM-less design will hold you back. Get the Kingston Fury Renegade or a drive with DRAM instead. And if you need rock-solid reliability with zero drama, the Samsung 990 EVO Plus is the safer bet, even if it costs more.

If you can find the MP44 at a good price, buy it. The performance is genuinely top-tier for Gen4, and most users report smooth sailing. But check the drive capacity as soon as you get it, and register the warranty immediately. The quality control concerns are real, even if they affect a minority of buyers. For the money, this is one of the best budget PCIe 4.0 drives out there.