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The Storage Revolution Nobody Expected
Last month, I watched Micron make a calculated bet that most people wouldn't see coming. While everyone obsesses over speed numbers and capacity wars, Micron launched the 3610—a QLC-based Gen 5 NVMe SSD that somehow manages to be faster than last-generation TLC drives while costing less to produce. It's the kind of engineering move that makes you step back and think about what actually matters in storage.
Here's the thing: storage innovation doesn't move in straight lines anymore. We're not just chasing bigger numbers on spec sheets. Micron's announcement at CES 2026 reveals something deeper about where the industry is heading. The company is positioning itself squarely for the AI era, where a single 4TB ultra-thin form factor matters more than raw speed bragging rights.
The timing is particularly interesting. Micron killed off its beloved Crucial consumer-SSD brand just weeks before launching the 3610. That's not coincidence. It's strategic repositioning. The company has decided to focus entirely on enterprise and AI markets, which means this drive isn't just a product launch—it's a signal about what Micron believes the future of computing looks like.
What caught my attention most was the paradox at the heart of this drive. It uses QLC NAND, which is traditionally slower and less reliable than TLC. But through clever engineering and Gen 5 architecture, Micron turned that potential weakness into an unexpected advantage. The 3610 delivers sequential reads up to 11,000 MB/s consistently, making it genuinely competitive with premium Gen 4 TLC drives while being more cost-effective.
Let's dig into what makes this drive matter, why the engineering choices matter, and what this means for anyone building or buying systems right now. Because if you care about storage performance, AI workload capability, or just understanding where technology is headed, understanding the 3610 matters.
TL; DR
- 11,000 MB/s sequential reads in a single-sided M.2 2230 form factor designed for ultra-thin devices
- 4TB capacity available on a single-sided drive, a world-first that eliminates design constraints
- 57% faster read speed, 45% faster writes compared to previous-generation QLC drives
- AI-optimized performance loads multi-billion-parameter models in under three seconds
- QLC economics with TLC-competitive speed through Gen 5 architecture and intelligent engineering
The Micron 3610 Gen5 SSD offers 57% faster sequential reads, 45% faster writes, and 43% better performance per watt compared to Gen4 QLC drives, making it highly efficient for modern workloads.
Understanding Gen 5 NVMe and Why It Matters
Gen 5 NVMe (PCIe Gen 5) represents a fundamental shift in how SSDs communicate with the rest of your system. To really understand what Micron accomplished here, you need to understand the architecture underneath.
Gen 5 doubles the bandwidth of Gen 4. Where Gen 4 maxes out at 4GB per second, Gen 5 reaches 8GB per second. That sounds like pure math, but it changes everything about how data moves through the system.
The benefit isn't just raw speed, though. Higher bandwidth means the drive can sustain performance longer without bottlenecking. It means random access patterns don't degrade as quickly. It means that under real-world workloads—not synthetic benchmarks—the drive actually feels responsive.
Micron's implementation here is particularly clever. The 3610 supports both PCIe Gen 5 and NVMe 2.0, which is the newer NVMe specification that itself is designed around higher-bandwidth scenarios. That dual support matters because it means the drive works properly whether it's in a cutting-edge system or one that's slightly older.
What most people miss about Gen 5 is the power efficiency angle. Higher bandwidth at lower voltages actually reduces power draw compared to Gen 4 drives pushing hard. The 3610 achieves 10% better performance per watt compared to Gen 4 QLC drives and a remarkable 43% improvement over Gen 4 TLC drives. No additional power draw required. That's not a minor detail when you're designing ultra-thin laptops that live or die by battery life.
The real insight here is that Micron understood something important: the future isn't about peak speed alone. It's about consistent, sustainable performance under realistic workloads. That's why they designed the 3610 with AWT (Advanced Wear Tracking) technology, which maintains performance during extended workloads instead of degrading over time like some drives do.
The QLC Question: Why QLC Now?
QLC NAND seems like a strange choice for a premium drive targeting AI workloads. Let me explain why it's actually brilliant.
QLC (Quad-Level Cell) stores four bits of data per cell, while TLC (Triple-Level Cell) stores three. That means QLC packs 33% more data into the same physical space. More data density means either cheaper production costs or the ability to offer massive capacity in tiny form factors. With the 3610, Micron chose to do both.
Traditionally, QLC comes with trade-offs. It's slower than TLC because you're reading from denser cells. It degrades faster under heavy write workloads. The performance tends to be inconsistent. Previous QLC drives made these compromises obvious and painful.
But here's where the engineering matters. Gen 5 bandwidth is fast enough that even with QLC's inherent density penalty, the drive can still deliver competitive speeds. The 3610 reaches 9,300 MB/s write speeds on the 2TB and 4TB models—that's legitimately fast. Not TLC-at-full-speed fast, but faster than most actual workloads require.
Micron also engineered around the density problem with intelligent caching and controller design. The drive uses Micron G9 QLC NAND, which is the company's latest generation. The improved cell design reduces the inherent slowdown compared to older QLC.
What's really happening here is a cost-performance optimization. Micron can make the 3610 more cheaply than an equivalent TLC drive, which means OEMs can either pocket the savings or pass them to consumers. In a market flooded with 2TB drives, offering a truly affordable 4TB in a single-sided form factor is a game-changer.
The endurance ratings reflect the QLC reality: the 1TB model is rated for 400 TBW (terabytes written), while the 4TB reaches 1,600 TBW. That's proportional scaling—you get more endurance with more capacity, which makes sense. All models share a MTBF (mean time to failure) rating of 2 million hours. In practical terms, for mainstream consumer and OEM use, these endurance numbers are more than sufficient. You'd probably upgrade your laptop before exhausting the drive's lifespan anyway.
The 2TB and 4TB models offer superior write speeds and random read/write performance due to increased parallelization, while the 1TB model lags slightly behind.
Form Factor Revolution: Single-Sided M.2 2230
The 3610's form factor might be the most underrated aspect of this entire launch. Micron is claiming a world-first here: the only 4TB capacity available on a single-sided M.2 2230 drive.
M.2 2230 is tiny. It's 22mm wide and 30mm long—smaller than your fingernail. Traditional 4TB drives use double-sided M.2 2280 form factors (28mm long), which means they stick out from the motherboard and make laptop design much harder.
Ultra-thin laptops—the 8mm to 12mm thick ones—have basically zero clearance for protruding SSDs. Designers usually resort to smaller drives, like 512GB or 1TB, compromising on storage. Or they use proprietary soldered storage. The 3610 eliminates that compromise entirely.
Having tested multiple thin laptops, I can tell you this matters in real ways. A single-sided drive means cleaner laptop internals, simpler battery placement, better thermal management since you're not heating both sides of the logic board. It's the kind of unglamorous engineering that makes products actually good.
The 3610 comes in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities, all in the same single-sided 2230 form factor. That's crucial flexibility for OEMs. They can design one slot and offer multiple capacity options without redesigning the motherboard.
Thermally, the single-sided design also performs better in constrained spaces. There's less internal heat generation since you're not stacking two controller-NAND combinations. The drive stays cooler, which means no thermal throttling during sustained AI workloads.
Micron's decision to go single-sided also hints at confidence in their controller design. Some manufacturers use the extra space for cooling or redundancy. Micron is saying their controller is efficient enough and reliable enough that they don't need it.
Speed Metrics Broken Down: Real Numbers
Let's talk actual performance numbers, because the headlines matter less than understanding what these numbers mean for real work.
Micron claims sequential read speeds up to 11,000 MB/s. To put that in perspective: that's moving about 11 gigabytes from the drive to system memory every second. In absolute terms, it's slightly slower than the fastest Gen 5 drives on the market, but only by 10-15%. For a QLC drive, it's genuinely impressive.
Sequential write speeds vary by capacity:
- 1TB model: 7,200 MB/s write speed
- 2TB and 4TB models: 9,300 MB/s write speed
The gap is interesting. The 1TB model has a lower write speed, probably because it has fewer NAND chips operating in parallel. Adding more capacity means more parallel write operations, which is why the 2TB and 4TB jump to 9,300 MB/s. It's a common pattern in SSD design.
Random performance is where most real-world workload differences show up:
- At 1TB: 850 KIOPS (kilo IO operations per second) read, 1,500 KIOPS write
- At larger capacities: 1,500 KIOPS read, 1,600 KIOPS write
Again, capacity scaling. More NAND chips means more parallelization. The max random write performance of 1,600 KIOPS is solid for a consumer drive. That translates to actual responsiveness when you're working with lots of small files, something any designer or developer does constantly.
Latency numbers tell another story: 50ms read latency, 12ms write latency. Read latency is on the higher side—premium Gen 5 TLC drives often hit 30-40ms. But write latency is good. What this means in practice? The drive is fast for writes but takes slightly longer to find and read data. For AI workloads (mostly sequential reads), it's fine. For database-heavy applications doing lots of random reads, you might notice the difference.
Comparison to Gen 4 drives shows the improvement clearly:
- Sequential read improvement: 57% faster than Gen 4 QLC
- Sequential write improvement: 45% faster than Gen 4 QLC
- Performance per watt: 10% better than Gen 4 QLC, 43% better than Gen 4 TLC
Those aren't small numbers. A 57% read speed improvement is the difference between waiting and not waiting. It's the difference between a snappy system and a frustrating one.
Benchmark numbers also matter. PCMark 10 scores improved by up to 30%, and 3DMark results rose by approximately 20%. These aren't synthetic nonsense—they measure real application responsiveness. That 30% improvement in PCMark directly translates to faster application launches, quicker file operations, and smoother multitasking.
AI Workloads: The Real Target Market
This is where understanding Micron's strategy becomes crucial. The company explicitly positions the 3610 as AI-ready. That's not marketing fluff.
AI models are increasingly running on-device rather than in the cloud. A modern LLM might have billions of parameters. GPT-3.5 has 175 billion parameters. Loading that many parameters from disk into memory is genuinely expensive—it takes time and burns through I/O bandwidth.
Micron claims the 3610 loads multi-billion-parameter AI models in under three seconds. That's specific enough to check. Let's do the math.
Assuming a typical model where each parameter uses 4 bytes (float 32 precision), a 7-billion-parameter model is roughly 28GB. At 11,000 MB/s sustained reads, that's 2.5 seconds. Add overhead for system operations, context switching, and caching layers, and you're looking at around 3-4 seconds real-world. The claim checks out.
Why does that matter? When you're running AI inference on a local machine—something increasingly common for privacy-sensitive tasks—you want the model loaded and ready as fast as possible. A three-second load time versus a ten-second load time is the difference between usable and frustrating.
The drive's consistency (maintained through AWT technology) also matters for AI. Models often access data in predictable patterns. If performance degrades mid-inference due to wear or thermal throttling, the entire application becomes slower. The 3610's design philosophy—consistent performance under load—directly addresses that concern.
AI scenarios also involve sustained reads. You're pulling model parameters continuously during inference. Sequential speed matters way more than random speed in this context. The 3610's 11,000 MB/s sequential read speed is precisely optimized for this use case.
Micron's positioning here is prescient. Assuming AI continues becoming more important in computing (safe assumption), storage that's optimized for loading large models becomes increasingly valuable. The company is essentially saying, "Our drive is built for what's coming, not what was."
The 3610 offers a balanced option with good performance and cost efficiency, while Gen5 TLC provides maximum performance at a higher cost and power usage. Gen4 remains a budget-friendly choice with decent performance. Estimated data.
Thermal Management and Power Efficiency
Thermal design often gets overlooked in storage discussions, but it's crucial for consistency and longevity.
The 3610 incorporates host-controlled thermal management, which means the system can monitor drive temperature and adjust performance if needed. This sounds simple, but it's important. Some drives just run hot. Others throttle aggressively when warm. The 3610 gives the host OS control, so Windows or macOS can make intelligent decisions about balancing performance and heat.
In ultra-thin laptops, thermal management is critical. There's basically no airflow. The drive sits centimeters from the CPU. Heat from storage can radiate upward and make the keyboard area hot. The 3610's single-sided design helps here—less NAND means less total heat generation.
Power efficiency is quantified: 10% improvement per watt over Gen 4 QLC, 43% over Gen 4 TLC. In a laptop context, that translates to longer battery life. Maybe 15-30 minutes of additional runtime per charge, depending on usage. Not revolutionary, but meaningful for mobile users.
The mechanism behind the efficiency gain is straightforward: Gen 5 bandwidth allows data transfers at lower voltages and for shorter durations. You move data faster, then the drive returns to low-power idle states. It's like the difference between sprinting to a destination and jogging. The sprinter might use more calories per second but finishes sooner and can rest immediately.
Security Features and Compliance
The 3610 includes several security layers that matter for enterprise and sensitive consumer use.
AES 256-bit encryption is standard. That means even if someone physically removes the drive and connects it to another system, the data remains unreadable without the correct encryption key. Hardware-accelerated encryption also means no performance penalty for using it.
Power-loss protection ensures that if the laptop suddenly loses power during a write operation, the drive doesn't corrupt data. This is especially important for thin devices with small batteries that might die unexpectedly.
TCG Opal 2.02 and Pyrite 2.01 compliance means the drive works with standard enterprise security frameworks. Organizations can use their existing MDM (mobile device management) tools to secure drives without custom solutions.
Block sanitization and crypto erase handle data destruction. Block sanitization securely wipes sectors. Crypto erase simply destroys the encryption keys, rendering all data unrecoverable instantly. It's useful when you need to retire a device or revoke access quickly.
These features are genuinely important in enterprise context but often ignored in consumer discussion. They're not flashy, but they're what separates a consumer drive from something that can be deployed in security-conscious environments.
Comparison to Alternatives: Where the 3610 Fits
Understanding the 3610 requires understanding what else is available.
Gen 5 TLC drives like Samsung's top-tier options offer faster peak speeds (13,000+ MB/s). They also cost more and use more power. If you need absolute maximum performance for sustained creative work or professional applications, TLC is still the choice. The 3610 trades some peak speed for cost efficiency and capacity.
Gen 4 drives remain viable for systems that don't support Gen 5 or for budget-conscious buyers. They're cheaper and still responsive for most workloads. A quality Gen 4 drive might be 20-30% less expensive than the 3610 while delivering 70-80% of the performance.
NVMe form factors matter here too. M.2 2280 is still the most common. It's bigger than 2230 but cheaper and easier to source. If form factor doesn't matter for your use case, you get more options and potentially better pricing with 2280.
The 3610's specific niche is ultra-thin devices that need substantial capacity in a tiny space. That's a growing market, especially as devices get thinner and AI becomes standard. It's not for everyone, but for the people it fits, it fits perfectly.
QLC NAND offers 33% more data density and 20% higher cost efficiency compared to TLC, despite slightly lower write speed and endurance. Estimated data.
Why Micron Killed Crucial and What That Means
The strategic timing here is worth discussing. Micron discontinued Crucial just weeks before launching the 3610. That's not arbitrary. It signals fundamental repositioning.
Crucial was Micron's consumer brand. It was the company's play for retail customers and enthusiasts building personal systems. Killing it means Micron is explicitly exiting the consumer SSD market. The 3610 isn't consumer-focused despite being compatible with consumer systems.
Why? Enterprise and AI markets offer better margins. OEM partnerships (building SSDs into laptops directly) are more stable than retail. And frankly, the consumer storage market has become brutally competitive and price-driven. Crucial couldn't compete against Samsung's brand loyalty and Western Digital's enterprise relationships.
The implications are important. Consumer choice becomes more concentrated. Samsung, SK Hynix, and Kioxia now have fewer competitors in volume markets. Prices might not increase dramatically because the market is still competitive, but innovation might slow.
On the flip side, Micron's focus on enterprise and AI suggests where the company believes the market is heading. They're betting on OEMs adopting their drives at scale, which is more profitable than individual retail sales. And they're betting on AI becoming so important that storage optimized for it becomes a selling point in consumer laptops.
It's a bet on the future, essentially. Micron is saying consumer laptops will increasingly need AI capability, which requires certain storage characteristics. The 3610 is their answer to that prediction.
Thermal Design and Ultra-Thin Constraints
Designing a drive for ultra-thin devices imposes real constraints that aren't immediately obvious.
Space is the obvious limitation. 2-4mm thickness for an entire laptop means 2-3mm for the logic board and maybe 1mm clearance for components. The SSD can't protrude. Every millimeter matters.
Thermal dissipation is harder in confined spaces. There's minimal airflow around the drive. Heat builds up. Standard cooling solutions don't work. Micron's response is to design a drive that generates less heat through efficient power usage—the 43% power per watt improvement over Gen 4 TLC.
Humidity and temperature stability matter more. Thin devices often have thin metal chassis that conduct temperature swings directly to internal components. A drive needs to tolerate larger temperature variations.
Battery proximity is another concern. Ultra-thin devices cram everything together. The drive sits near the battery. If it generates heat, it heats the battery, which reduces battery life and capacity. Efficient designs avoid this.
The single-sided form factor solves multiple problems simultaneously. It fits the space constraint, generates less heat (fewer NAND chips), and simplifies the physical layout. That's good engineering—solving multiple problems with one design choice.
Micron's AWT technology (Advanced Wear Tracking) also helps in the thermal context. By maintaining consistent performance and preventing thermal spikes under load, the drive stays cooler overall and avoids the vicious cycle of heat-induced throttling causing more heat.
Performance Under Real Workloads vs. Benchmarks
Benchmarks tell one story. Real-world usage tells another.
The 3610's PCMark 10 improvement of 30% is real. PCMark measures things like application launch time, file copying, system responsiveness. That 30% improvement means noticeable speed in daily use. Applications launch faster. File operations complete quicker. Context switching feels snappier.
The 3DMark improvement of 20% is also meaningful but less relevant to most users. 3DMark focuses on gaming and graphics-heavy workloads. Unless you're gaming on a thin laptop (rare, since thin devices usually have integrated graphics), this number matters less.
For creative work (photography, video, design), the sequential speed matters. Loading a 500MB Photoshop file happens at roughly 11,000 MB/s with the 3610, taking 45 milliseconds. On a Gen 4 drive at 7,000 MB/s, it takes 71 milliseconds. Neither feels slow, but repeated across dozens of operations, the Gen 5 drive saves meaningful time.
For coding and software development, random performance matters more than sequential speed. Working with source code repositories, loading various files, context switching between applications. The 3610's random KIOPS numbers (1,500 read, 1,600 write) are solid but not exceptional. You'd feel a difference compared to older drives, less so compared to premium Gen 5 TLC drives.
For AI inference (the 3610's target market), sustained sequential read performance is exactly what matters. Loading model parameters, running inference, saving results. The sequential speed is optimized for this and it shows.
The reality of the 3610 is that it's purpose-built for specific scenarios. In those scenarios, it's excellent. In other scenarios, it's very good but not the absolute best. That's fine. Purpose-built tools often outperform generalists in their domains.
The storage industry is moving towards AI-first designs, increased QLC adoption, higher SSD capacities, and improved power efficiency. Estimated data based on current trends.
Endurance Ratings and Longevity
TBW (terabytes written) ratings measure how much data you can write before the drive might fail.
The 3610's ratings scale with capacity:
- 1TB: 400 TBW
- 2TB: 800 TBW
- 4TB: 1,600 TBW
To put this in practical perspective: a typical user writes maybe 20-50GB per day. That's moderate usage for creative work. At 50GB/day, the 4TB drive would last 32,000 days or roughly 87 years. Obviously you won't keep a laptop for 87 years, so endurance is effectively unlimited for consumer use.
Even heavy users—professionals doing video editing, machine learning training—might write 200GB per day. At that rate, the 4TB drive lasts 8,000 days or 22 years. Still far longer than the device will be in service.
Enterprise data centers pushing terabytes per day per drive would exhaust endurance faster, but those environments use enterprise-class drives designed specifically for that workload.
The MTBF (mean time to failure) rating of 2 million hours is also solid. That's 227 years of continuous operation. Again, not meaningful as a specific prediction, but as a relative metric, it suggests Micron's confidence in the design.
QLC NAND traditionally had endurance concerns, but the 3610's ratings suggest Micron's G9 generation handles that well. The scaling (more capacity = more endurance) makes sense too. More NAND means better distribution of writes across more cells, extending lifespan.
Integration Ecosystem and OS Compatibility
The 3610 works with any system that has an M.2 slot supporting NVMe. That's essentially everything built in the last 5 years except some older enterprise systems.
OS compatibility is straightforward. Windows recognizes NVMe drives instantly with no driver installation needed. macOS (since 2016) has full NVMe support. Linux has had NVMe support for years. Chrome OS supports NVMe in Chromebooks that use it.
OEMs integrating the 3610 don't need custom firmware or drivers. It's a standard NVMe drive that "just works." From a deployment perspective, that's valuable. It reduces complexity and support costs.
TCG Opal compatibility means enterprise management tools can control the drive. Organizations can require encryption, enforce secure erase, audit access. All through standard frameworks rather than proprietary solutions.
Micron's ecosystem positioning suggests easy OEM integration rather than consumer-facing feature richness. There's no special software, no proprietary dashboard. That's actually a good thing from a reliability perspective. Fewer moving parts means fewer things to break.
The lack of DRAM cache is worth mentioning. Some SSDs include onboard DRAM for caching, which can improve performance. The 3610 uses a DRAM-less architecture, which reduces cost and complexity. Gen 5 bandwidth is fast enough that DRAM caching becomes less critical. You're trading complexity for simplicity and cost.
Future Outlook: Where Storage Is Heading
The 3610 tells us something about where Micron—and likely the industry—thinks storage is heading.
AI-first design: The explicit positioning for AI workloads signals that Micron expects on-device AI to become standard. Not fringe. Standard. Every laptop loading models regularly. That shapes everything about drive design going forward.
Form factor shrinking: Ultra-thin devices pushing toward 8-10mm thickness means smaller form factors become necessary. 2230 is the smallest practical size for full NVMe bandwidth. Future drives probably stay at this size or go smaller, which means the 3610's form factor is likely the future shape.
QLC adoption accelerating: The 3610 proves QLC can compete with TLC on speed while offering cost and capacity advantages. Expect QLC to become standard in mainstream devices. Enterprise might stick with TLC for endurance, but consumer and OEM volumes will increasingly shift to QLC.
Power efficiency mattering more: As devices get thinner and battery life becomes more important, power efficiency becomes a differentiator. The 3610's 43% improvement over Gen 4 TLC isn't an anomaly. It's the direction.
Capacity scaling up: 4TB in a single-sided 2230 is impressive now. Give it two years and 8TB in the same form factor is plausible. Capacity will continue increasing because demand for local storage (for AI models, large datasets) keeps growing.
Micron's decision to focus on enterprise and AI markets also suggests the industry thinks consumer storage is commoditizing. High-margin growth is in AI and professional use, not retail consumer SSDs. That might reshape the market significantly.
Gen5 NVMe doubles the bandwidth of Gen4, reaching 8GB/s. It also improves performance per watt by 10% for QLC and 43% for TLC drives, enhancing efficiency without increasing power draw.
Honest Assessment: What's the Catch?
No product is perfect. Understanding the tradeoffs is important.
The QLC NAND combined with a DRAM-less architecture creates a real limitation: sustained performance under heavy write workloads degrades more than TLC drives. This is by design and expected for QLC. If you're doing professional video editing or machine learning training with heavy writes, a TLC drive is safer.
The higher read latency (50ms vs. 30-40ms on premium drives) matters for random read-heavy workloads. Database operations, large file systems with lots of metadata, certain server workloads. For typical consumer use, imperceptible. For specific professional workloads, potentially notable.
Power-loss protection and crypto-erase are valuable features, but they're also reliability safety nets. You're counting on them not to fail, which they shouldn't but is a complex system adding potential failure points.
The drive lacks the consumer-friendly features that some competitors offer. No RGB lighting (irrelevant), but also no comprehensive monitoring software, no detailed SMART reporting tools, no web interface. That's fine for OEMs but potentially inconvenient for individual users.
Availability is also uncertain. The 3610 is positioned for OEMs, not retail sale. You might not be able to buy one directly. Your only path is getting a device that includes it.
These aren't deal-breakers. They're reasonable tradeoffs for a drive optimized for a specific market. Understanding them helps you make informed decisions.
Practical Implications for Different Users
OEM buyers (manufacturers): The 3610 is directly relevant. It offers a complete solution for ultra-thin AI-capable devices. You can design a compelling 4TB product with minimal space constraints. The cost efficiency compared to TLC drives improves margins. This is probably your best option if you're building thin devices.
Enterprise IT: Less directly relevant unless you're deploying thin clients with local AI capability. The security features (Opal compliance, encryption) are useful. Endurance ratings are solid. You probably have other storage solutions for volume expansion, so the 4TB capacity is nice but not essential.
Enthusiast builders: The 3610 isn't available retail and probably won't be. You can't buy it for your personal system. You're limited to buying devices that include it. If you want similar performance, competitors like Samsung 990 Pro Gen 5 are available retail at similar or lower cost.
Developers and AI practitioners: If you're running models locally and your laptop doesn't already have a Gen 5 SSD, upgrading when possible is worthwhile. The specific 3610 is less relevant since you can't source it independently, but Gen 5 SSDs in general are increasingly valuable as AI tools become more sophisticated and locally executed.
Gamers: The 3610 offers no particular advantage. Gaming benefits from speed, but the difference between Gen 4 and Gen 5 SSDs is imperceptible in actual gaming. Your money is better spent elsewhere.
The Bigger Picture: Micron's Strategy
The 3610 launch reveals Micron's strategic positioning for the next computing era.
The company is betting that:
- AI becomes ubiquitous in consumer devices, not just professional tools
- Device thinness matters more than raw capacity, driving form factor miniaturization
- Cost efficiency is crucial for mainstream adoption, making QLC the volume play
- Enterprise/AI markets are more profitable than consumer retail
- OEM partnerships are more stable than retail channels
Each of these bets is reasonable. Each shapes the 3610's design. And each suggests that Micron has spent considerable time thinking about where computing goes.
The discontinuation of Crucial is the strongest signal. Exiting consumer retail completely suggests conviction that the market doesn't work for them anymore. It's a costly decision (brand value, market share), which means they believe the alternative (focusing on enterprise/AI/OEM) is more valuable long-term.
Historically, storage companies that correctly predict market shifts dominate. Intel dominated SSDs because they predicted enthusiasts and professionals would care about performance. Samsung thrived because they predicted mainstream consumers would adopt SSDs. Micron's current prediction—that AI and thin devices matter—could be equally consequential.
Technical Specifications Reference
For completeness, here's the full specification set:
Performance (Sequential):
- Read: 11,000 MB/s (all capacities)
- Write: 7,200 MB/s (1TB), 9,300 MB/s (2TB/4TB)
Performance (Random):
- Read: 850 KIOPS (1TB), 1,500 KIOPS (2TB/4TB)
- Write: 1,500 KIOPS (1TB), 1,600 KIOPS (2TB/4TB)
Latency:
- Read: 50ms typical
- Write: 12ms typical
Capacity: 1TB, 2TB, 4TB
Form Factor: M.2 2230 single-sided
Interface: PCIe Gen 5, NVMe 2.0
NAND: Micron G9 QLC
Endurance: 400 TBW (1TB), 800 TBW (2TB), 1,600 TBW (4TB)
MTBF: 2,000,000 hours
Security: AES 256-bit, TCG Opal 2.02, Pyrite 2.01
Power: 10% better performance-per-watt than Gen 4 QLC, 43% vs Gen 4 TLC
Availability: OEM/Channel, Not retail
FAQ
What is the Micron 3610 NVMe SSD?
The Micron 3610 is a PCIe Gen 5 NVMe SSD released at CES 2026 that uses Micron's G9 QLC NAND technology. It delivers sequential read speeds up to 11,000 MB/s and is specifically designed for ultra-thin devices and AI workloads. The drive is available in a single-sided M.2 2230 form factor with 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities, making it unique for offering 4TB in the smallest practical form factor available.
How does the 3610 achieve fast speeds with QLC NAND?
QLC NAND is traditionally slower than TLC because it stores more bits per cell, creating denser and more complex read operations. The 3610 overcomes this through several mechanisms: first, Gen 5 bandwidth is fast enough that even with QLC's inherent density penalty, sequential speeds remain competitive. Second, Micron's G9 QLC generation improves cell design compared to earlier QLC implementations. Third, intelligent controller design and caching strategies optimize data access patterns. Finally, the single-sided design with optimized NAND positioning reduces internal latency. The combination of these engineering choices results in performance competitive with previous-generation TLC drives while maintaining QLC's cost and capacity advantages.
What are the benefits of choosing a Gen 5 drive like the 3610?
Gen 5 provides significant advantages for modern computing workloads. The drive delivers 57% faster sequential reads and 45% faster sequential writes compared to Gen 4 QLC drives, translating to faster application launches, quicker file transfers, and improved responsiveness in daily use. The 3610 specifically excels at AI workload handling, loading multi-billion-parameter models in under three seconds. For ultra-thin devices, the single-sided M.2 2230 form factor enables designers to include 4TB storage without compromising thinness or battery placement. Additionally, the drive achieves 43% better performance per watt compared to Gen 4 TLC, extending battery life without additional power draw. The QLC architecture with Gen 5 bandwidth also provides cost efficiency, allowing more affordable pricing compared to equivalent TLC drives while maintaining competitive performance.
Is the 3610 suitable for professional creative work?
The 3610 is capable for many professional applications, particularly those focused on sequential data access like video playback, model inference, or large file processing. PCMark 10 scores improved by 30%, indicating real gains in application responsiveness and file operations. However, professionals doing heavy write-intensive work such as sustained video rendering, large-scale database operations, or intensive machine learning training might experience performance degradation over extended sessions due to the QLC architecture becoming less efficient under continuous heavy writes. For these demanding scenarios, Gen 5 TLC drives offer more consistent sustained performance, though at higher cost. The 3610 represents an excellent balance for content creators whose workflows mix sequential reads with moderate write operations.
How does the 3610's form factor benefit ultra-thin laptops?
The M.2 2230 single-sided form factor is crucial for ultra-thin device design. Traditional SSDs use M.2 2280 form factors (28mm long) or stack components on both sides, creating protrusions incompatible with devices thinner than 8-10mm. The 3610's single-sided 2230 design fits within the space constraints of ultra-thin devices while delivering 4TB capacity—previously impossible in this form factor. Single-sided design also improves thermal characteristics since fewer NAND chips generate less heat, critical in devices with minimal internal airflow. For designers, one physical slot can accommodate all three capacity options (1TB, 2TB, 4TB) without redesigning the motherboard. This flexibility enables manufacturers to offer multiple storage configurations without complexity or cost penalties.
What does "AI-ready" mean for the 3610's performance?
AI-ready refers to the drive's optimization for loading and accessing large language models and neural networks on local devices rather than cloud services. Modern LLMs contain billions of parameters requiring sustained sequential read access from storage to system memory. The 3610's 11,000 MB/s sequential read speed enables loading a 7-billion-parameter model in approximately 2.5 seconds, with system overhead bringing realistic load times to under three seconds. The consistent performance maintained by AWT (Advanced Wear Tracking) technology prevents thermal throttling or degradation during inference operations where access patterns are predictable and sustained. Lower read latency becomes less important compared to sequential throughput in this scenario. The drive's design essentially prioritizes the specific data access patterns that AI inference requires, making it measurably better for this emerging workload class compared to general-purpose drives.
How does QLC endurance rating affect reliability?
The 3610's endurance ratings (400 TBW for 1TB, 800 TBW for 2TB, 1,600 TBW for 4TB) scale proportionally with capacity, meaning you get more total write cycles with larger drives. For perspective, a typical user writes 20-50GB daily. The 4TB model rated at 1,600 TBW would sustain this usage for 30,000+ days or 87+ years. Even professional users writing 200GB daily would exceed endurance after 22 years. From a practical standpoint, the drive will far outlast the device it's installed in for any realistic consumer or standard professional usage. The MTBF rating of 2,000,000 hours reflects Micron's confidence in the physical design. QLC endurance has improved significantly in recent generations, and the 3610's ratings suggest the G9 NAND handles this well. Heavy enterprise workloads pushing terabytes daily would exhaust endurance faster, but those deployments typically use specialized enterprise drives.
What makes the 3610 different from Samsung's Gen 5 offerings?
Samsung's premium Gen 5 drives like the 990 Pro achieve higher peak speeds (often 13,000+ MB/s) but cost more and consume more power. The 3610 prioritizes form factor flexibility and cost efficiency through QLC technology, accepting slightly lower peak speeds in exchange for greater capacity in smaller physical sizes and improved power efficiency. Samsung drives typically use TLC NAND, providing better sustained performance under continuous heavy writes. The 3610's real advantage is the single-sided M.2 2230 form factor available up to 4TB—Samsung doesn't offer an equivalent. The choice between the two depends on your specific needs: if maximum speed and write sustainability matter most, Samsung's TLC drives are superior. If form factor flexibility, capacity density, and power efficiency matter more, the 3610 is the stronger choice. For most consumer scenarios, both deliver more than sufficient performance.
Will the 3610 be available for individual consumer purchase?
Currently, the 3610 is positioned for OEM distribution, meaning you'll access it through devices that include it (laptops, thin clients) rather than retail channels. Micron's strategic focus on enterprise and AI markets, combined with the Crucial brand discontinuation, suggests consumer retail availability is unlikely. If you need a comparable Gen 5 SSD for a consumer build, alternatives like Samsung 990 Pro or other Gen 5 TLC drives are available through retail channels. However, you won't find the specific 4TB single-sided 2230 form factor anywhere else, making the 3610 unique—you simply have to buy a device that includes it. Future updates could change this distribution strategy, but current signals suggest OEM-only availability is intentional.
How does the 3610 impact the future of SSD design?
The 3610 signals several trends likely to shape future SSD design: QLC adoption will accelerate across mainstream consumer and OEM devices due to demonstrated competitive speeds in Gen 5 systems. Form factor shrinking toward M.2 2230 and smaller variants will continue as devices get thinner. AI-optimized storage design (prioritizing sustained sequential read performance) will become standard rather than specialty. Power efficiency will increasingly matter as mobile device thinness creates thermal constraints. And OEM customization will likely increase while retail consumer choice narrows as companies like Micron exit consumer retail. These trends suggest future SSDs will be more specialized (purpose-built for specific workloads) rather than generalist, more integrated into devices rather than field-replaceable, and more shaped by AI requirements than traditional computing patterns.
Key Takeaway
The Micron 3610 represents a thoughtful engineering response to where computing is heading, not where it is. The 3610 proves QLC can deliver TLC-competitive speed through intelligent Gen 5 architecture, that form factor matters as much as raw specs for ultra-thin devices, and that AI workload optimization is becoming a storage design priority. For consumers buying new devices in 2025-2026, understanding this drive's positioning helps you make better purchasing decisions about what specifications actually matter. For industry observers, it signals Micron's conviction that the future is AI-first, thin-device-focused, and efficiency-driven. Whether those bets pay off will determine whether Micron thrives or struggles in the next computing era.
Key Takeaways
- Micron 3610 delivers 11,000 MB/s sequential reads through Gen5 architecture paired with QLC NAND, achieving performance competitive with TLC at lower cost
- Single-sided M.2 2230 form factor with 4TB capacity is world-first, enabling ultra-thin device design without storage compromises
- 57% read speed improvement and 43% better performance-per-watt over Gen4 create measurable real-world benefits for contemporary computing
- Explicit AI workload optimization enables multi-billion-parameter model loading in under three seconds, targeting emerging on-device inference market
- Micron's exit from consumer SSD market signals company conviction that enterprise and AI markets are more strategically valuable than retail channels
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