Micron unveils SSD 3610 NVMe — the industry's first consumer PCIe 5.0 drive based on QLC memory
Micron, which announced its exit from the consumer market in December announced its exit from the consumer market, seems to have somewhat revised its plans and introduced the Micron 3610 NVMe solid-state drive, the first consumer SSD PCIe Gen5 based on QLC NAND in the industry.
The new product is aimed at mass-market laptops, ultrathin devices, and PCs that require high speed at a moderate price.
What is known
The Micron 3610 is built on proprietary G9 QLC memory and delivers impressive performance: sequential read speeds reach 11,000 MB/s, and write speeds are 9300 MB/s. The drive also demonstrates up to 1.5 million IOPS in random reading and 1.6 million IOPS in writing.
One of the key features is the availability of a 4TB version in a compact single-sided M.2 2230 form factor — this is the first Gen5 QLC SSD with such capacity in such a small size. The solution is aimed at ultrathin laptops, portable consoles, and devices without active cooling.
Micron uses a DRAM-less architecture with Host Memory Buffer support, which reduces power consumption and improves thermal performance, making the SSD an excellent choice given the shortage of RAM chips.
The drive provides up to 43% better energy efficiency than Gen4 SSDs on TLC memory. The manufacturer also claims that the device can load AI models with 20 billion parameters in less than three seconds, making it suitable for AI tasks on client devices.
The drive is available in 1, 2, and 4TB versions, and Micron positions it as a solution that “democratizes Gen5 speed” and makes high-performance SSDs more accessible to the mass market.
The start of sales for the new SSD from Micron is expected later in 2026.
For those who want to know more
Source: Micron