Summary
Is the TEAMGROUP MP44L a good buy?
For a DRAM-less NVMe, the TEAMGROUP MP44L 2TB is a budget PCIe 4.0 NVME SSD that will work great in a laptop, mini MC, desktop or PS5. It warrants our strong recommendation. Just make sure your motherboard has a PCIe Gen 4×4 interface or better. If you’ve only got a motherboard with a PCIe Gen 3×4 interface you won’t be using the NVMe anywhere near its full potential.
From our extensive testing, the MP44L performs admirably in Linux. The drive ran our Ubuntu and Manjaro operating systems with no issues, and didn’t exhibit any performance issues which we’ve seen with some other NVMes under certain real-world workloads when running in Linux. Performance is extremely good for a DRAM-less SSD. Coupled with its low price point, it’s by far the best value for money out of the group tested. With its all-around above average performance, it’s a good buy.
Stability is also excellent in part helped because the SSD is extremely good at dissipating heat. It’s so good it blows away every other drive we tested in this respect. This is an important factor for laptops, mini PCs, and consoles as it’ll avoid throttling issues which can happen in situations with other Gen 4×4 SSDs.
Our power consumption tests show that it is also extremely energy-efficient which helps the MP44L to run very cool. Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. This one is power efficient from our testing.
Leaving benchmarks aside, does the MP44L offer a worthwhile improvement in desktop performance in Linux in a PC with a slower NVMe such as a Samsung 980 1TB? The answer is a resounding affirmative; there’s a noticeable improvement. It has a simple design, a 5 year warranty although the 1200 TBW endurance is on the low side.
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction and Specifications
Page 2 – Benchmarks
Page 3 – Summary