OWC Mercury M.2 1Tb NVMe SSD review

Posted on November 07, 2022 by Raymond Chen

What memory type installed in OWC Mercury M.2 1Tb and another characteristics read below here.

OWC's 1Tb Mercury M.2 use Silicon Motion SM2260 controller. The Mercury M.2 comes equipped with MLC memory. OWC Mercury M.2 is offered also in 3 capacities, including 2 Tb, 500 Gb and 250 Gb volume sizes.

Performance and benchmarks

SSD works on PCIe M.2 3.0 x 4 with maximum write speeds equals to 1087 Mbps, and sequential read speeds 1872 MB/s. It also has input/output performance 155000 on reading and 190000 on writing operations.

Endurance and warranty

OWC provide 3 years warranty.

Specs

Category	Value
Capacity	1 Tb
Interface	M.2 3.0 x 4
Controller	Silicon Motion SM2260
Memory type	MLC
DRAM	n/a
Read speed (Mb/s)	1872
Write speed (Mb/s)	1087
Read IOPS	155000
Write IOPS	190000
Endurance (TBW)	n/a
MTBF (million hours)	n/a
Warranty (years)	3

Conclusion

OWC Mercury M.2 1Tb use PCIe 3 that is undoubtedly slower than PCIe 4.0. The write speed is 1087 Mb/s, that is slower than has most of competitors. On balance, OWC Mercury M.2 1Tb has more disadvantages and our editor strongly do not advise to buy it.

+ Pros

Capacity

- Cons

Slow writing speed
PCIe 3.0

Buy this or similar SSD:

Video Review

Review: OWC Express 4M2 SSD enclosure - 8TB!

FAQ

The OWC Mercury M.2 has no DRAM in their controller or information about it is not known. Dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) in their controller help to increase endurance and input/output performance.

The OWC Mercury M.2 due to the low density of memory chips may run without extra heat sinks. Some motherboards designed with thermal pads above and below the SSD for improving performance during times of high loads.

The Mercury M.2 1Tb has write speed 1087 Mb per second, read speed 1872 Mb per second. Storage operate on Silicon Motion SM2260 controller and M.2 3.0 x 4 high-speed serial computer expansion bus standard. The NAND flash memory type is MLC.