Introduction, Specifications and Packaging

A solid performer at an acceptable price.

Introduction:

Crucial and their parent company Micron have certainly launched their share of SSDs over the years. Product launches have effectively toggled back and forth between both names, with Crucial handling the upgrade market while Micron proper handles the OEM side of things. Both sides have one thing in common – solid performing SSDs at a budget-friendly price point. Having the best performing SSD on the market is great, but does nobody any good if the majority of purchasers can't afford it.

We had Micron out to discuss the MX500 before we completed our testing. Here is the full discussion video:

Specifications:

Micron® 3D TLC NAND Flash RoHS-compliant package SATA 6 Gb/s interface TCG/Opal 2.0-compliant self-encrypting drive (SED) Compatible with Microsoft eDrive® Hardware-based AES-256 encryption engine

Performance ( ALL CAPACITIES ): Sequential 128KB READ: Up to 560 MB/s Sequential 128KB WRITE: Up to 510 MB/s Random 4KB READ: Up to 95,000 IOPS Random 4KB WRITE: Up to 90,000 IOPS

Power consumption: 250GB: <3.5W 500GB: <4.5W 1000GB/2000GB: <5.0W

Endurance – total bytes written (TBW): 250GB: 100TB 500GB: 180TB 1TB: 360TB 2TB: 700TB



A few points from these impressive specs: Performance specs are common across *all* capacities. Yes, even the smallest model is rated to perform as well as the largest.

Endurance is very high, especially for TLC NAND. Samsung's 850 EVO 500GB and 1TB models are rated at 150TB. Heck, the 850 PRO 1TB is only rated at 300TBW. Sure that's the same rating carried up from the 512GB model of the same, but it's not Micron's fault that Samsung opted to capacity-bracket their endurance ratings.

Packaging:

No frills here. Quick start guide contains a link to crucial.com/support/ssd to get you started.

Read on for our full review of the Crucial MX500 1TB SSD!