PNY CS2130 500GB M.2 PCIe NVMe Gen3 x4 Internal Solid State Drive (SSD), Read up to 3,500 MB/s - M280CS2130-500-RB

I bought this SSD to add to my new Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 15.6 (2021 model). The Galaxy Book Pro has an M.2 2230 SSD by default, and its hard to find a 1TB with 2230 or is expensive if it is available. Good thing the laptop has an extra M.2 2280 NVME slot for upgrades. So instead of replacing the SSD, I just got this PNY CS2130 1TB as an additional drive. The installation was quick and easy, the laptop was able to recognize and formatted it without any problem. I wont go over the details of the read/write speeds of this drive, but I can tell, this one is very snappy. I was able to open up 64 megapixels RAW images in Adobe Lightroom really quick, and exporting these images into jpegs to the drive is fast. Before, when I am exporting a hundred images to a spinning drive, I can stand up, get some coffee before it gets done. But with this setup, I dont even have time to stand for it to finish exporting a hundred images. Ive been using this drive for barely a week now, and I am impressed. If this lasts me at least 5 years, then its worth it. Highly recommendable.

I used to love PNY, but this one has put me off. It never quite worked right and I always blamed it on my mobo. Would randomly disappear and BIOS wouldnt see it. Eventually, after 9mo, it would not show up at all - tested on multiple devices and enclosures. Really disappointed. I registered it on the PNY website but never reviewed a confirmation from them. Same issue when I submitted a warranty ticket; the site just reloads and you never receive a confirmation. Im really hoping they will honor the 5yr warranty, but it doesnt look promising. I ended up buying a Samsung and it has worked flawlessly. I dont like a lot of their products, but they really make great drives.

Easy to install and set up. Good affordable product.

I got 465GBs rather than 500GBs, but It was kind of worth. :D

I bought 2 of them for my QNAP NAS… they run a little hot about 35-39 degrees centigrade during heavy workloads.. I was able to install heat sync that help cool them off. The performance has been better than I expected, and in my case I use them as SSDs Cache that get used heavily. Great choice and for the price is a great option. They have been installed for over 2 months and no errors. Stats in my NAS showed approximately 2465 IOPs and about 1.8-2.5Gb/ sec as cache drives. Better than I expected.

For being so expensive, the packaging was absolutely no frills, both the OEM box being small and weak, and Amazon for sticking it in a bubble mailer. Im probably lucky it wasnt bent!

Update: read speeds are only 1800 MB/s, which is very disappointing since this drive is advertised to reach up to 3000 MB/s. Have to knock off 2 stars for that. Better than a SATA drive, but spend the extra money to buy a Samsung 800 or 900 series. Works flawlessly on an ASRock Z170 Pro4. Installed Windows 10 to this drive with no issues. File copy speeds far surpass those of my old sata SSD (and especially my old HDD too). Bought mainly because in January 2021, this 1 TB NVME SSD had the fewest top critical reviews on Amazon. Will update if I have any issues.

Note: this is a three-month review. The device works as intended, even though I installed it in a laptop that runs rather hot. What else is there to say?

Newer games that need to download big assists a lot really benefit from being on NVME drives, this drive really helped with Forza Horizon 5.

Extremely fast and great value for the price.