Lexar today introduced the Ares PRO line of flagship M.2 NVMe SSDs targeting gamers and PC enthusiasts. The drive features a PCI-Express 5.0 x4 host interface. The company hasn't confirmed the combination of controller and NAND flash, but it appears like the Ares PRO features a DRAM cache. The drive comes in 1 TB, 2 TB, and 4 TB capacities, with all three variants offering sequential read speeds of up to 14 GB/s, but differing in maximum sequential write speeds. The 4 TB variant offers sequential writes of up to 11 GB/s, the 2 TB variant up to 10 GB/s, and the 1 TB variant up to 7.5 GB/s.

4K random access performance varies among the three variants, with the 4 TB variant offering up to 2 million IOPS 4K random reads, with up to 1.5 million IOPS 4K random writes; the 2 TB variant offering up to 2 million 4K random reads with up to 1.4 million 4K random writes; and the 1 TB variant trailing with up to 1.6 million IOPS 4K random reads, with up to 1 million IOPS 4K random writes. Endurance values for the three are 3000 TBW for 4 TB, 1500 TBW for 2 TB, and 750 TBW for 1 TB. The drive doesn't come with any integrated heatsink, but a graphene-based heat-spreader film. The company didn't confirm pricing or availability, but is backing these drives with 5-year warranties.