Teamgroup MP44S SSD review: The cheapest 2230 SSD worth buying

For years, the 2230 form factor for SSDs was almost completely neglected and was only used by OEMs for low-end drives. However, the Steam Deck and ROG Ally have created massive demand for powerful, gaming optimized SSDs that can fit inside these small handhelds, and only 2230-sized drives will fit. Every company is throwing their hat in the ring, including Teamgroup with its MP44S. As a cheaper 2230 SSD with a focus on value, it's not the fastest among its peers, but it definitely delivers great bang for buck, especially for the Steam Deck.

About this review: Teamgroup sent us the MP44S 2TB for the purposes of this review. Teamgroup did not see the contents of this review before publishing.

Teamgroup MP44S: Pricing and availability

At the time of writing, the MP44S is available at most major PC part retailers, and recently the price of these drives has gone down considerably. Last month the 1TB model was going for $95, but now it costs $70, while the 2TB version is $180 when it was $200 before. The 2TB has gone for as little as $165, and it might hit that low yet again in the future, especially considering how competitive the market is getting.

This means the MP44S 1TB is by far the cheapest among its peers, as Corsair's MP600 Mini is $90, Sabrent's Rocket 2230 1TB is $90 to $110, and Western Digital's WD Black SN770M is $110. The 2TB model at $180 is also relatively cheap, compared to the Rocket 2230 2TB at $200 and the SN770M at $220. But as we'll see later on, there's a good reason why the MP44S is as cheap as it is.

How the Teamgroup MP44S was tested

To assess the full capability of the MP44S, I benchmarked it in a test bench rather than a handheld like the Steam Deck or ROG Ally. This test system uses Asus's TUF Gaming B650-Plus motherboard, a Ryzen 7 7800X3D, and 16GB of DDR5 RAM clocked at 5,600MHz and CL40. Admittedly this isn't exactly real world, but these handhelds should be capable of getting the fullest out of a 2230-sized SSD, except for the Steam Deck, which is limited to PCIe 3.0 speeds, meaning you won't see any performance above roughly 3,700MB/s.

I've selected three benchmarks to show in this review: CrystalDiskMark, which shows the theoretical maximum performance in a variety of synthetic workloads; 3DMark's storage test, which uses real games to benchmark performance in gaming related workloads; and IOMeter, which I used to test performance in writes over a long period of time. I waited about 10 to 15 minutes between each test to ensure results weren't impacted by depleted SSD cache.

The MP44S's competition in this review are two other 2230 drives: Sabrent's Rocket 2230 1TB and Western Digital's WD Black SN770M. These are two of the most high-profile 2230 SSDs today, though they are much more expensive than the MP44SS per gigabyte.

Performance

In CrystalDiskMark, I tested the six workloads included by default, which are half sequential, half random, and test a range of block sizes, queue depths, and thread counts.

Scores are organized by read/write and are measured in MB/s.

Overall, the MP44S is slower than its rivals in sequential reads and especially writes, but not by a crippling margin. Things look much better in the random tests however, which sees the MP44S beat the Rocket 2230 in two and match the SN770M in one. Plus, the two random tests where the MP44S does well are also the more important ones, since the 16-thread random test is even more synthetic than the single-threaded random tests. On the whole, the MP44S is behind the Rocket 2230 and SN770M, but not by a huge margin.

3DMark's storage benchmark tests pretty much everything you would do with your games: installing games, launching games, saving files, moving game installation folders, and recording gameplay.

The margins here are much more favorable to the MP44S. It's less than 200 points behind the Rocket 2230 and a little over 300 points behind the SN770M, making it about 94% and 88% as good as each drive. Not a bad result considering the price difference.

On the whole, the MP44S is behind the Rocket 2230 and SN770M, but not by a huge margin.

Finally, we have IOMeter, an old program developed by Intel to test HDDs (and now SSDs) to their absolute limit by exhausting their cache, which is a small portion of the SSD that performs very well in contrast to the rest of the drive. I set IOMeter up to consume 50% of each drive and then had IOMeter perform sequential write operations at a queue depth of 8 and a block size of 1MB for 15 straight minutes. This way, we can see the peak performance of each drive (like in CrystalDiskMark) and also how well that performance holds up over a long file transfer.

Scores are measured in MB/s.

Even without exact numbers, you can tell the MP44S isn't doing so hot. It's by far and away the slowest SSD here. It chugged along at around 3,800MB/s or so for 50 seconds, but then cratered to just over 100MB/s, with occasional spikes of 500MB/s here and there. The Rocket 2230 by contrast saw a performance drop much sooner, but hovered around 1,800MB/s instead. The SN770M meanwhile fluctuated between 4,300MB/s and 1,000MB/s, which was less consistent but ultimately saw it too beat the MP44S by a large margin.

While this is by no means a great result for the MP44S, it's not horrible. If you're downloading games, even 350MB/s is more than a one gigabit download speed, which is 125MB/s. However, moving game files to the MP44S from a faster drive would definitely be pretty slow. But the thing is, if you're putting the MP44S inside a Deck or Ally, it's the only storage device installed and you seldom ever move files around in that kind of PC, so it seems unlikely to me that the target audience for this SSD would run into its poor long-term writing performance.

Should you buy the Teamgroup MP44S?

You should buy the Teamgroup MP44S if:

• You want a high-capacity SSD for your Steam Deck, ROG Ally, or other compact device
• You want good bang for buck in a 2230-sized SSD

You shouldn't buy the Teamgroup MP44S if:

• You plan on transferring large amount of files onto the MP44S
• You simply want the best 2230 drive

Although I'm not super happy about the MP44S's cache and long-term writing performance (merely setting up IOMeter took hours), it's fine for what it's made for. Games are not going to destroy the cache on the MP44S, even if you fill it up to near capacity, and installing games should be fine too whether your internet is fast or slow. The corners the MP44S has cut to become cheaper than its competitors are worth cutting, as long as you just care about gaming performance. It's definitely one of the best SSDs for the Steam Deck, though maybe not for the ROG Ally, which is a higher performance device.

It seems unlikely that the target audience for this SSD would run into its poor long-term writing performance.

Now if you're looking at the MP44S for a device like the Microsoft Surface, which also requires 2230-sized drives, I'd maybe pass. While the Surface is not a high-end device, you're still likely to be moving files around, and you could definitely run into the MP44S's cache issue and find yourself bogged down in a slow file transfer. In this case, I'd probably recommend spending a little extra for Sabrent's Rocket 2230.