KingSpec 1TB 2230 NVMe GEN 4x4 M.2 SSD, R/W up to 5,000MB/s & 2600MB/s, PCIe 4.0 Internal SSD - 3D TLC NAND Flash, 2230 SSD Great for Steam Deck ROG Ally Microsoft Surface

Stopped working completely after a 6 months. It is no longer recognized on my laptop.I tried contacting support for a replacement but no response.

The 2230 form factor is for small devices such as the SteamDeck, and small laptops. Before you even consider this item make sure that your intended device is "M" key and supports 2230. These are even smaller than the small 2240 drives that have sparse support to begin with.Being an "M" key, these are strictly NVMe devices. This limits your device/enclosure compatibility. That said, these are special purpose drives. I'm not going to post benchmarks because I cannot test this one at full speed. I did install it on an older laptop and it has made a huge performance difference above the OEM provided drive.I did not read the fine print, but the 15 year warranty will likely outlive the device you install this to. I have purchased other KingSpec 3D NAND devices previously and they have been running 24/7 for years with no issues. I have confidence in them among the budget brands. You can find other brands cheaper, but this is a brand I trust.

Product works with the steam deck

At 256gb, the use case for this KingSpec 256GB M.2 2230 SSD drive is somewhat limited. While it is big enough to install Windows or Linux on, there really isn't much space to store many games. This means that it's not much of an upgrade over the base model of Steamdeck. Anyone who's serious about gaming on a Steamdeck would be looking for a bigger drive.These drives can also be easily installed on a Surface Pro now that they exposed the M.2 slot in the back but again, the limited space means that you'd still be looking for something bigger pretty soon after installing it.What this size is perfect for, though is a portable drive. As a linux live boot, you can run multiple operating systems on your computer at a good speed through USB C, including various Linux distros, ChromeOS, or even Windows via Windows-To-Go. With a portable OS, you can quickly plugin this drive in and boot up into an alternate OS with some useful utilities.I didn't upload a benchmark because the true performance of this drive would only be limited by the enclosure that I'm using but I can say that it performs as fast as my other M.2 drive when using the same enclosure, meaning that this drive is able to hit the speed limit of my Type-C enclosure.With that said, I really wish I could find more options for a 2230-only enclosure. Most enclosures out there are long and can fit all the way up to a 2280 but to truly make this drive portable, you need to have a small enclosure. Currently, there are only two options available here and neither look very good.

So far so good. This drive is a great match for the Steam Deck.