By Without a doubt, the Lexar Play 2280 SE, which I presume means “Special Edition,” is a looker. It is presently only available at Costco. Its incorporated styled heatsink makes it seem significantly better than it does without. Although it performs well in the real world for host memory buffer (HMB) PCIe 4.0, it is slower for random operations than the more expensive and older Lexar Play 2280 that is sold elsewhere.
In a PC, at that. Although the Play 2280 SE is compatible with the PlayStation 5 for which it is designed, the host memory buffer is not supported by that game system; therefore, you are constantly using secondary cache.
Stated differently, it will not function as well as a DRAM design seen in Sony electronics. All HMB designs are the same, but Lexar is one of the few businesses I’m aware of that promotes its HMB as though it were designed especially for the PlayStation. Hurry up now.
Features
The Play 2280 SE, a PCIe 4.0 x4, M.2, NVMe SSD with an Innogrit IG5236 controller and stacked QLC (Quad-Level Cell/4-Bit) NAND, was designed in the popular 2280 (22 mm wide, 80 mm long) form factor. The Maxio MAP1602A controller and TLC (Triple-Level Cell/3-bit) NAND used by the earlier Play 2280 are not the same drive.
Similar to the Play 2280, the Play 2280 SE is a host memory buffer design, meaning that it does not use dedicated memory on the SSD itself for primary caching functions, but rather the memory on your device. In Windows Explorer, HMB architectures typically outperform DRAM designs in big file transfers or sustained speed, but they lag in tiny file, random operations. In the case of the Play 2280 SE, the latter was particularly true.
What is the Lexar Play 2280 SE’s price?
At the time of writing, the Play 2280 SE cost $225, including the heatsink, and was only available at Costco in a 4TB capacity. As of this writing, the older 4TB Play 2280 costs slightly more than $250 on Amazon. It is also available in a 2TB capacity for $188.
SE’s $225 is a fair bargain, but I’ve seen WD’s great SN7100, without a heatsink, on sale for less than the Play 2280 SE or Play 2280. Typically, a heatsink costs between $10 and $15.
You probably won’t see the Play 2280 SE on sale for some time because it is now a Costco-only product. Lexar did hint that other vendors would someday offer the drive.
What is the performance of the Lexar Play 2280 SE?
Overall, the 4TB Lexar Play 2280 SE is not far from the quickest PCIe 4.0 host memory buffer design I’ve examined. However, even when compared to the older Play 2280, it was inexplicably slow at single-queue reads in CrystalDiskMark 8. Though the latter had the 2280 SE tagged as a slower writer with its 2MB and 48MB data sets compared to any of the other size data sets, AS SSD and ATTO disagreed.
Because lower-capacity Play 2280 SEs have less NAND to use as secondary cache (writing the NAND as single-bit SLC), you will see this drop-off sooner.
An additional warning: the Play 2280 SE performed quite haphazardly in CrystalDiskMark 8 and didn’t like our Highpoint 7604A PCIe 5.0 card at all. During the item return time, make sure it’s satisfied in your system. Good measuring sticks include AS SSD 2, ATTO 4, and CrystalDiskMark 8.
Regarding the PlayStation. The 2280 SE is compatible with that system, and you’ll probably be pleased with it. Even when using secondary cache, NVMe is incredibly quick. Though more expensive, DRAM designs will function better in a PlayStation.
Conclusion
The Play 2280 SE does well in real-world continuous throughput, despite not being the highest performer in its class. I really enjoy the way it looks. In terms of cost, it’s also competitive. The fact that it is being promoted for a system for which it is not optimally suited bothers me. Four stars for your PC. 3.5 stars for the PlayStation.
