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    Review: The new Crucial 1TB MX500 SSD

    By now we all understand the benefits of SSD and want them in every device we own. Thankfully in 2018, the size limitations are fading fast with 1 and even 2TB SSD sizes readily available. The speeds and reliability of SSDs easily outperforming spinning drives, with the last remaining attribute that needs work, being price.

    Over the last few weeks, I’ve had the chance to have the the latest MX500 1TB SSD from Crucial in my PC.

    Performance

    The manufacturer specs for the 2.5″ drive lists sequential read speeds of up to 530 MB/s and write speeds of 510 MB/s. In testing, these numbers were pretty close to the mark with CrystalDiskMark 6 showing sequential read speeds of 549.9MB/s, actually faster than the listed spec, that almost never happens. When it comes to write speeds, I had a little less than the listed number with 483.8MB/s, but seriously these numbers are insane compared to drives from a couple of years ago.

    By way of comparison, I ran the same test against a secondary drive in the PC, a WD 10TB spinning disk drive. The read speed was a lowly 189.8MB/s and write speeds just 180.2MB/s. This shows the vast difference between an SSD drive that’s great as your boot drive, the drive you want to launch applications on and transact day-to-day data for the fastest experience possible. The large archive drive is a way to store large volumes of data, but is simply no match for the speed of the Crucial SSD.

    Features

    Crucial includes their second generation Micron 3D NAND technology and is 45x more energy efficient than a typical hard drive. While the disk doesn’t get much of a workout for bitcoin mining, if you’re trying to optimise for power efficiency, this is definitely a metric you’ll want to pay attention to. If you’re a general user, then you’ll be trying to reduce power bills, so every component in your PC counts, particularly if you’ll be on it for hours every week.

    While our review unit is 1TB in size, the drives are now available in capacities up to 2TB in the 2.5-inch form factor and up to 1TB in the M.2 form factor.

    Crucial Senior SSD Product Engineer, Jon Tanguy said,

    “This next generation MX500 SSD features a stackable 64-layer, 256-gigabit component. Micron’s floating gate NAND is designed with CMOS Under the Array (CUA), which allows us to minimise the footprint of the die. At 59 square millimeters, it’s among the world’s smallest 256-gigabit die.

    The MX500 advanced features include:

    • Dynamic Write Acceleration for faster saves and file transfers.
    • Hardware-based encryption to keep personal files and confidential data secure.
    • Integrated Power Loss Immunity to avoid unintended data loss when the power unexpectedly goes out.
    • Exclusive Data Defense to prevent files from becoming corrupted and unusable.
    • Redundant Array of Independent NAND to protect data at the component level.

    Its always difficult to review the reliability of the drive during a review, but Crucial are confident enough in their product that they’ve backed it with a 5-year limited warranty.

    Price and Availability

    The 2.5-inch version of the MX500 is available now on Crucial’s website, or through online retailers like Scorptech and RamCity. The drive costs:

    • 250GB – A$119.00
    • 500GB – A$199.00
    • 1TB – A$389.00 (reviewed)
    • 2TB – A$739.00

    The MX500 M.2 version will be available in Q1’18.

    Overall

    This 1TB Crucial MX500 SSD offers amazing speeds at a great price and storage size. The 2TB drive is still a healthy premium and will likely be some time before that becomes the default option. If you’re a creative person who runs the Adobe Creative Cloud, a developer that runs Visual Studio, a gamer with a decent Steam library, then you’ll want to opt for the 1TB option and take advantage of the speed on offer.

    If you can get away with the smaller drives, then you’ll get the same performance, cheaper.

    Jason Cartwright
    Jason Cartwrighthttps://techau.com.au/author/jason/
    Creator of techAU, Jason has spent the dozen+ years covering technology in Australia and around the world. Bringing a background in multimedia and passion for technology to the job, Cartwright delivers detailed product reviews, event coverage and industry news on a daily basis. Disclaimer: Tesla Shareholder from 20/01/2021

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