Micron unveils Crucial P310 consumer SSD for handheld/laptop gaming

Micron Technology announced the availability of the Crucial P310 2230 Gen4 NVMe solid-state drive (SSD), which is targeted at portable gaming storage.

The SSD empowers enthusiasts of handheld gaming and users of mini PCs and ultrathin laptops to store more games and data-intensive content at their fingertips without sacrificing speed or performance.

With read and write speeds of 7,100 and 6,000 megabytes per second (MB/s), respectively, and capacities up to 2 terabytes (TB), the P310 2230 SSD packs a unique punch, offering high performance and capacity in a compact, power-efficient form factor.

“Today’s contemporary games are storage- and performance-hungry, and this is especially true for handheld gamers who want to be able to quickly access all their favorite games at their fingertips,” said Jonathan Weech, senior director of product marketing for Micron’s Commercial Products Group, in a statement. “We’ve built our Crucial P310 2230 Gen4 SSD to satisfy this need for speed and more capacity, providing a dynamic, power-efficient SSD that allows gamers to build their dream gaming libraries, load multiworld games faster and extend battery life for a richer gaming experience on the go.”

The Crucial P310 2230 Gen4 SSD offers read speeds of 7,100 MB/s, making this SSD the fastest 2230 Gen4 consumer drive in the industry, Micron said. It can also perform random reads up to 1 million input/output operations per second (IOPS), allowing gamers to boot up and drop into their games faster. And it has capacity options from 1TB to 2TB, allowing handheld gamers and users of ultrathin laptops and mini PCs to store more games and content at their fingertips without having to worry about size or capacity.

The device has power-efficient storage, which provides higher performance while limiting battery loss and extending device use on the go, even for the most data-intensive, graphically demanding games or creative projects. And it is backward-compatible with Gen3 devices.

The P310 2230 is architected from the ground up for power efficiency, offering drastically higher performance on similar amounts of power to other solutions. This capability is enabled by Micron’s advanced 3D NAND and innovative controller technology, fine-tuned in close collaboration with Phison to deliver fast Gen4 performance close to the maximum bandwidth in a lower power footprint.

“We’ve worked closely with Crucial’s engineers to optimize our Phison E27T 4-channel DRAM-less controller to deliver the utmost performance possible in the lowest possible power footprint,” said Michael Wu, general manager and president of Phison Technology, in a statement. “This close technical collaboration to perfect the Crucial P310 2230 gives handheld gaming fans an edge with near saturation for Gen 4 bandwidth, delivering the speed and power needed to play longer and faster.”

The SSD is also compatible with ultrathin laptops and mini PCs, making it ideal for users wanting to increase speed and space for data-intensive projects and creative workflows on the go.

Using the M.2 2230 form factor, the P310 Gen4 SSD offers a lightweight, compact solution that users can install into handheld gaming consoles — like the Valve Steam Deck and ASUS ROG Ally and certain laptops like the Microsoft Surface or select DellTM models — in as little as five minutes. I’m trying it out in an Asus ROG Ally device now.

The P310 2230 Gen4 SSD is currently available at crucial.com as well as through select e-tailers, retailers and global channel partners, and it comes with a five-year warranty.