Lenovo starts shipping laptops with Chinese-made YMTC SSDs due to skyrocketing NAND Flash prices

When it comes to consumer technology and PC hardware, specifically memory and storage, we're currently in unprecedented times. Prices are rising at an alarming rate, with manufacturers shifting focus toward the booming, insatiable AI and data center market. This is leading to scarcity and price increases for hardware that's even a generation or two old, stuff that normally drops in price as the years go on.

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As one of the biggest names in the consumer PC space, Lenovo has been fairly open about the challenges it and the broader industry face, with recent comments from the company painting a rather bleak picture of the state of affairs. With companies like Samsung, KIOXIA, and SanDisk/Western Digital dominating the consumer SSD and storage market for OEMs, it looks like Lenovo is now sourcing more affordable SSDs from Chinese suppliers such as Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC).

This relatively new company is unknown in the wider global market, but due to limited supply and pricing from the big players, Lenovo now appears to be shipping laptops with YMTC storage globally. According to Notebook Check, while testing the new productivity- and office-focused Lenovo ThinkBook 14 G9 IPL, it discovered that the 512GB M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSD (in the 2242 form factor) was a YMTC drive. The first of its kind in a global laptop from Lenovo. So then, how did its performance stack up to the bigger brands and names in the SSD space?

Well, that would be "below average." Notebook Check confirms that its read and write speeds of 3,950 and 2,514 MB/s, respectively, fall below the average for SSD storage in a productivity or office laptop, with the 4K (4096 bytes) speed also being "nothing to write home about." What makes this notable is that Lenovo is currently the largest PC OEM by sheer volume, so in 2026, YMTC SSDs are reaching the wider global market at scale.

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Question #1

How does the YMTC 512GB M.2 PCIe 4.0 (2242) SSD in the ThinkBook 14 G9 IPL compare in sustained real-world file transfers to Samsung or Western Digital OEM SSDs?

Notebook Check found the YMTC 512GB M.2 PCIe 4.0 (2242) in the ThinkBook 14 G9 IPL delivered below-average sustained real-world file transfer performance, with read/write speeds of about 3,950 MB/s and 2,514 MB/s and lackluster 4K performance compared with typical productivity/office laptop SSDs. This indicates it trails the usual Samsung and Western Digital OEM SSDs in sustained real-world transfers.

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Question #2

How does the YMTC drive’s 4K random I/O performance impact common office tasks like Excel spreadsheets, email, and web browsing compared with typical OEM SSDs?

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While also highlighting that Chinese-sourced memory and storage are catching up to the point where they're now a viable option for consumer-facing hardware companies.