Everything changed when the fire nation attacked… Honestly, that’s what it feels like writing this review. Teamgroup’s MP44Q PCIe 4.0 SSD has finally landed with me for testing, and it’s a curious little QLC number that, once upon a time, would have offered itself up as a nice, affordable, tantalizing opportunity for any would-be budget gamer’s rig. The problem is that it’s 2026, this sorta QLC feels a bit old fashioned, and SSD prices are through the roof.

It’s especially tough as we’ve seen even superb budget drives such as the WD Blue SN5100 totally hampered by an extraordinarily high price tag. And that’s a problem, a real big one, especially for Teamgroup. Side-by-side these drives, although targeted at the same audience, and with similarly high price tags (at time of writing the MP44Q is $305 and the SN5100 is $317), perform wildly differently.

The MP44Q is a sleek little budget PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD. It’s a single-sided M.2 2280 design giving it broad compatibility with all of your consoles, laptops, and PCs, and comes complete in 1-4 TB capacities with no heatsink variant available.

As for that core hardware, you get a Maxiotech MAP1602A controller (a slightly older model, and the same one found inside of the Lexar NM790), and die packages built out of YMTC’s 232-layer 3D QLC NAND flash (you “might” find similar density YMTC TLC in Biwin’s Black Opal NV7400, or Micron flash who knows…). There’s no dedicated DRAM cache here, mostly to keep costs down, but you do get a healthy dose of 40 MB of system memory allocated via HMB, and a big chunk of pseudo SLC, and that’s kind of it.

There’s no drama, no new flagship parts or anything, just off-the-shelf OEM components—tried and tested and ready to go. What is interesting, however, is the endurance rating, as Teamgroup’s got this clocked at 1000 TBW, which for a budget QLC drive is quite impressive. The default rating for most SSDs these days is 600 TBW for 1 TB, and practically all manufacturers abide by that, so it’s nice to see an improvement here. Although you still get the same 5-year warranty anyway.

As for pricing, at the time of writing, it’s kind of on the high side for a budget drive, especially compared to that SN5100. The reason I’ve been slamming that comparison so hard in this review is purely because, by the metrics that matter, the SN5100 outclasses the MP44Q in almost every way while being cheaper as it does it.