Introduction

HP, aka Hewlett Packard, is one of the most well-known tech companies in the world. They produce nearly every product you can think of: laptops, desktops, printers, enterprise hardware, and solid-state drives.

For their SSD storage products, HP teamed up with BIWIN Storage, a large Chinese OEM for SSD solutions with 25 years of experience in the storage and microelectronics business. They were granted authorization from HP to produce SSDs in their name.



The HP EX900 Pro is the smaller brother of the HP EX950, which we reviewed a while ago. While the EX950 uses a Silicon Motion SM2262ENG controller, the EX900 Pro is built using the cheaper Silicon Motion SM2263EN paired with Intel 96-layer TLC flash. A 1 GB Micron DRAM chip provides 1 GB of storage for the mapping tables of the SSD. To connect to the host system, the HP EX900 Pro uses the PCI-Express 3.0 x4 interface.

HP's EX900 Pro comes in capacities of 256 GB ($50), 512 GB ($70) and 1 TB ($110). Endurance for these models is set to 160 TBW, 320 TBW, and 650 TBW respectively. HP provides a five-year warranty for the EX900 Pro.

Packaging

The Drive

The drive uses the M.2 2280 form factor, which makes it 22 mm wide and 80 mm long.


Like most M.2 NVMe SSDs, the HP EX900 Pro connects to the host system over a PCI-Express 3.0 x4 interface.


On the PCB, you'll find the controller, four flash chips, and one DRAM chip.

Chip Component Analysis

The Silicon Motion SM2263EN is a four-channel flash controller with support for NVMe 1.3, TLC, and DDR3/DDR4 memory. Apparently, HP has customized it in some way, as evident by the HP logo and the different model number.


The four flash chips are Intel/Micron 96-layer 3D TLC NAND; they have been rebranded, too. Each chip has a capacity of 256 GB.


A Micron DDR3-1600 chip provides 1 GB of fast DRAM storage for the controller to store the mapping tables.

Test Setup