Lexar Armor 700 8TB review: Impressive capacity, good speeds, with a catch

Lexar's new 8TB SSD is a dream for creatives, but Apple's port choices are holding it back. Let's find out if the large capacity Armor 700 is still worth buying.

As both a photographer and videographer, I'm always churning through storage. I have near a hundred terabytes sitting on my desk in one fashion or another.

Recently, I've been working more mobile than I had been, requiring somewhat of a reevaluation of my workflow. I needed something I could bring around to use with my iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Pro with enough capacity to reduce my transfers between drives.

Fortunately, the Lexar Armor 700 8TB recently launched, seemingly the answer to my needs. It has a lot going for it, but Apple's peculiar standard support makes it a tough call.

Lexar Armor 700 8TB review: Design

The Lexar Armor 700 is standard fare for a mobile drive. It's not particularly flashy nor offensive. The body is tapered to the edges just slightly, with a matte rubberized finish and silver metal end caps.

There are ridges going down the metal sides which provide both added grip and enhanced drop protection. Being an "armor" drive, drop performance is important.

It promises three meters of drop protection, which I think is more than sufficient for my uses. A chest-height drop would only be roughly half of that.

Lexar also says the drive has an IP66 rating, meaning it is both dust-tight and resistant to water. It is supposed to hold up against water jets from any angle, though it isn't rated for submersion.

It isn't the thinnest drive that Lexar makes. Something like the Lexar SL500 is much thinner.

The SL500 also has a cool trick where it can be inserted into a silicone sleeve to turn it into a MagSafe SSD for use with iPhone. It's a fantastic, ultra-slim drive.

It's the added durability and resistance that separates the two. For something that I intend to travel with and that could come into contact with children in the house, I need that enhanced durability, married with the performance and capacity.

Lexar also includes a short USB-C to USB-C cable in the box. One end has a tethered USB-C to USB-A adapter.

I like that the tether means you won't lose it, but for me, it just gets in the way. I eventually cut the adapter off.

Lexar Armor 700 8TB review: Performance

This drive is a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 SSD with up to 2,000MB/s read and 2,000MB/s write speeds. At least if you have the device to support it.

Apple supports USB 3.2 Gen 2, but not Gen 2x2. That 2x2 means it has two lanes of data, which is what enables the 2,000MB/s speed compared to USB 3.2 Gen 2 devices with a single lane of data.

It's a little annoying that Apple has chosen not to support this optional variant of the USB standard, while being so fast to adopt others like USB 4.0 and Thunderbolt 5.

I ran several performance tests, including the Blackmagic Disk Speed test. In several runs, I was getting just under 1,000MB/s for both the read and write speeds.

That's exactly what I'd expect when using a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 drive on a USB 3.2 Gen 2 machine. One lane means you'd get about half the performance, which is what I saw.

I also ran a large real-world file transfer test, moving a 100GB Final Cut Pro project to the drive. It ended up taking a bit under two minutes to complete the transfer, which isn't bad at all.

Continuing the testing, I wanted to see whether the cache could be a bottleneck during long, continuous use on my Mac. This drive has a Silicon Motion SM2320 controller that uses a small stack of SLC NAND media, rather than a dedicated DRAM cache.

If allocated a small cache, transfer speeds may start fast, but will start to throttle as the cache is filled. Small file tests may show particularly fast speeds because they don't get close to filling the cache and may not surface performance issues with bigger transfers.

To test this, I ran a 1TB continuous sequential write using fio on my MacBook Pro. The whole test lasted 18 minutes and 24 seconds.

Looking at the data, the drive averaged 972MB/s over the course of the test. There was no discernible drop in speed over the entire span, meaning it couldn't exhaust the SLC cache with the Mac's 10Gb/s limit.

This of course doesn't mean the drive has a 1TB cache, but rather it's able to move the data from the SLC cache to the main storage faster than the data is transferred over. To get the size of the cache, you'd need to test the drive on a machine that supports USB 3.2 Gen 2x2, but this is good news for Mac users.

Lexar Armor 700 8TB review: Why USB 3.2?

Inevitably, people will ask why Lexar opted for USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 compared to standards Apple supports, like USB 4.0 or Thunderbolt. I think there are a few reasons for this.

First, USB 3.2 is more common than USB 4.0 or Thunderbolt and Gen 2x2 is widely supported on Windows PCs. It's also cheaper to produce.

If Lexar can achieve 2,000MB/s of performance using an older standard, I think that's acceptable. Especially when we know the alternative.

There are several drives widely available using USB 4.0 or Thunderbolt with 8TB capacity. The rub is, they're much more expensive.

Glyph's 8TB Thunderbolt mobile SSD is $1,899. OWC has a USB 4.0 version of its 8TB mobile SSD and a Thunderbolt version that will run you either $2,149 or $2,299 respectively.

Glyph does have a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 version that is only $599, but it's roughly 2-3 times the size of the Lexar Armor 700. If you leave out the Gen 2x2, you could opt for the SanDisk 8TB Extreme USB 3.2 Gen 2 mobile drive, which is $839, but it is capped at 1,000MB/s no matter what.

One last one to highlight is Samsung, who offers its USB 3.2 Gen 1 drive in an 8TB flavor, but it's only going to yield 480MB/s speeds, half of what everyone else has. It still will cost roughly as much as this Lexar drive.

It's just frustrating that Apple chose not to support that optional Gen 2x2 spec, for cases like this.

I think that all things considered, Lexar has the best combination of price, capacity, and performance. If you want even better performance on Mac, you can get it — for a price.

Lexar Armor 700 8TB review: Should you buy the Lexar Armor 700 8TB?

The Lexar Armor 700 is a solid drive, and I think the 8TB version is fantastic. That's ample storage for most users, and at current prices, it's a steal when compared to the competition or even the 4TB version.

Obviously the biggest issue with it is Apple's lack of support for USB 3.2 Gen 2x2, but it's still a solid option when you consider the market and performance.

Otherwise, the worst I can say is that the silicone exterior has a tendency to attract dust. Which is a commonality amongst any other silicone-covered rugged drives.

If you are looking for sizable storage that you can take with you, Lexar hit the sweet spot. It would be even better if Apple didn't hold back its performance.

Lexar Armor 700 8TB review: Pros

• Compact size for portability
• Rubberized outside for durability
• IP66 dust and water resitance rating
• Great performance, depending on device
• USB-A adapter included
• Stays cool during use
• Massive 8TB capacity on the go

Lexar Armor 700 8TB review: Cons

• Rubber finish attracts dust
• Apple doesn't support USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 for full performance
• Hard to find in stock

Lexar Armor 700 8TB rating: 4 out of 5

Where to buy the Lexar Armor 700 8TB

Currently, the Lexar Armor 700 8TB is tough to find amidst the storage shortage hitting the industry. Adorama is perhaps your best bet with a price of $849 and an expected in-stock backorder date of October.

B&H is currently out of stock, but lists the drive at $799. Amazon also has the drive and its other capacities, but the 8TB specifically is out of stock.