TeamGroup MP44S review: A decent Steam Deck SSD for a great price

There may not be anything exciting about the appearance of the TeamGroup MP44S – with its black and white, text-covered sticker, it looks decidedly uninspiring, but behind that unassuming exterior lies a decent SSD if you’re looking to upgrade your handheld. Not only is it ideal for a Steam Deck, but it can also run a bit faster in PCIe 4.0 mode, making it a solid upgrade for an Asus ROG Ally X as well.

Combine its solid performance with a surprisingly reasonable price, and you end up with a great product – it’s not as if you’re going to see this TeamGroup drive when it’s in your handheld anyway. After several months of using the 2TB drive in my Steam Deck, as well as testing in a PC to gauge its peak performance, I’ve put this drive straight on our guide to the best gaming SSD, and it’s a solid choice for many of the best gaming handheld models.

You do have to dismantle your Steam Deck in order to install this drive, and install SteamOS on it yourself, but it’s well worth it. It’s great when you’re greeted with so much spare storage when it comes to installing games – you get 1.84TB on the 2TB drive once it’s formatted and you’ve installed SteamOS, and you can genuinely fit loads of games on one of these drives. Even a big game such as Baldur’s Gate 3 can fit onto this drive 12 times.

Specs

The main bit that jumps out about the MP44S specs is that 4x PCIe 4.0 interface, which gives it a level of future-proofing not always found on M.2 2230 SSDs, which are small enough to fit into a handheld. The Steam Deck itself only has a PCIe 3.0 interface, so that extra speed is wasted on the deck, but buying this drive gives you some extra headroom if the Steam Deck 2 supports PCIe 4.0, and it’s also an ideal partner for the new Asus ROG Ally X, which does support PCIe 4.0.

The jump-up in speed with the new interface isn’t huge with this drive, with TeamGroup’s quoted 3,500MB/s write speed being in the same league as top PCIe 3.0 drives anyway. However, the quoted top sequential read speed of 5,000MB/s is well in front of any PCIe 3.0 drive, even if top-end desktop PCIe 4.0 drives, such as the Samsung 990 Pro, can read at over 7,000MB/s.

There’s a balance to be struck here, though. The MP44S needs to run at a decent speed while also not overheating in the tight confines of a handheld, and 5,000MB/s is about the right balance here. We tested it at PCIe 4.0 speeds without a heatsink, and it was still able to hit this speed without much throttling.

The other areas of the spec that stand out are the use of quad-level cell (QLC) NAND, which has a reputation for being slower than triple-level cell (TLC), and the lack of a DRAM cache. This drive isn’t designed for record-breaking performance, but as you’ll see in the performance section, it does still deliver more than enough speed for a gaming handheld.

It’s also worth noting the endurance time of this drive, which is much higher on the 2TB model than the 1TB model. The latter is only rated to write up to 250 terabytes over its lifetime (TBW stands for terabytes written), which is very low compared to the 1,000+ TBW we often see on desktop drives.

The 450TBW rating of the 2TB drive is much better, and more in line with what we see on other 2230 drives. This isn’t a huge issue for a handheld, where you’re mainly just installing and uninstalling games, rather than regularly dealing with individual files on the desktop, but we’d definitely recommend buying the 2TB drive over the 1TB drive here.

Benchmarks

I can attest to the MP44S’ snappy performance when you’re using it in a Steam Deck, especially in comparison to loading games from a microSD card, but I also ran it on a desktop PC in order to assess its top speeds objectively. In addition, I tested it with and without a heatsink to see how it throttles when it heats up. I tested the drive in a Gigabyte B660 Aorus Master DDR4 motherboard, using its PCIe 4.0 M.2 slot and heatsink, with an Intel Core i9 14900K CPU and 32GB of Corsair 3,600MHz Vengeance Pro SL DDR4 memory.

In terms of raw sequential read speed, the TeamGroup MP44S more than delivers on its promise. Even without a heatsink, it ran at a sequential read speed of 5,089MB/s in CrystalDiskMark, beating TeamGroup’s claim by 89MB/s. Add a heatsink and it runs at 5,171MB/s, so it does throttle a little when it heats up, but not to a disastrous degree. To put this figure in context, it’s a fair bit quicker than the 4,183MB/s you get from a WD Blue SN580 desktop drive, but a fair way off the 6,878MB/s you get from a top drive such as the Samsung 980 Pro.

Compared to other M.2 2230 drives, this is in the same league as the WD Black SN770M and Corsair MP600 Core Mini, which both top out at 5,150MB/s and 5,000MB/s respectively. If you want even faster speeds, the Crucial P310 can read at up to 7,100MB/s, but it also has a higher price.

Likewise, while the sequential write speeds aren’t the fastest results we’ve ever seen, they’re well in front of TeamGroup’s claims. The drive writes at 3,702MB/s in CrystalDiskMark, making TeamGroup’s stated speeds look a little conservative. This goes up to 3,902MB/s with a heatsink attached, but it’s clear you can easily achieve TeamGroup’s stated top speeds on a system without a heatsink, which is ideal for a handheld.

Of course, while sequential read and write speeds might be a useful metric for measuring top speed, they don’t give you an indication of real-world performance, so I also ran the PCMark 10 full drive test on the MP44S, as well as CrystalDiskMark’s random read and write tests. The PCMark 10 result of 2,299 shows this drive can handle running an OS well when it’s being hammered – this is the sort of result we usually expect from a PCIe 3.0 drive on the desktop. It’s a fair bit behind the 2,921 of the WD Blue SN580, but it’s fine for a handheld running Windows.

The MP44S’ random write was also solid at 306MB/s, beating both the Samsung 980 Pro and WD Blue SN580, although it falls behind both these drives when it comes to random reads.

Price

The TeamGroup MP44S price is $134.99 for the 2TB drive, and $69.99 for the 1TB drive, which are both great prices for the capacity on offer, but we recommend going for the 2TB drive out of the two options. Comparatively, the 2TB WD Black SN770M 2230 drive goes for around $190 and isn’t any quicker, and this is cheaper than the Corsair MP600 Core Mini as well.

Alternatives

Crucial P310 2230

If speed is your top priority, the new 2024 Crucial P310 is the handheld drive to get, with a top speed of 7,100MB/s, it makes full use of the 4x PCIe 4.0 interface. However, bear in mind that you rarely see the benefits of high sequential read and write speeds in a handheld, and you’ll also need to pay more for it, with this drive generally going for around $200. In the UK, however, this drive generally goes for a cheaper price and is well worth considering.

Corsair MP600 Core Mini

Corsair’s PCIe 4.0 2230 SSD is a little more expensive than the TeamGroup MP44S, and its speeds are very similar, albeit with a slightly higher quoted write speed of 3,800MB/s. However, this drive is also regularly on offer. If you’re looking to buy a new SSD for your handheld, it’s worth searching for this drive on Amazon to see if it’s discounted, especially if the TeamGroup MP44S is out of stock.

Verdict

TeamGroup has struck the balance just right with the MP44S. This handheld SSD can offer decent performance on a PCIe 4.0 system, even without a heatsink, and its 2TB capacity is awesome on a Steam Deck as well. It’s the price that really sells it, though, as $134.99 is a good deal for a 2TB Steam Deck upgrade, plus you can run it even faster in an Asus ROG Ally X.

It’s not all plain sailing – in particular, the low endurance rating of the 1TB model is poor, and we firmly recommend going for the 2TB drive. Also, while that sequential read speed of over 5,000MB/s is fine, and overkill for the PCIe 3.0 Steam Deck, it’s already been out-performed by the new Crucial P310. At this price, though, the 2TB MP44S is a great upgrade for your handheld, giving you loads of storage space, as well as some future proofing, for well under $150.

For more upgrade ideas for your handheld, check out our guide to the best Steam Deck accessories, where we cover all sorts of goodies, from docks to microSD cards.