By: Jonathan Kwan

December 14, 2018

It was a late evening near the end of 2017. Christmas break has been on for a week now, and I was walking around my house looking for some jobs that I should have done during the year but have not. As I was climbing my stairs, I noticed three of the nine light bulbs in the chandelier suspended from my foyer's nearly twenty-foot ceiling was out. Since the light was suspended by a chain and it was in the foyer next to the stairs, replacing the light bulbs are not complicated as you think: Simply stand on the stairs, pull the chandelier in, and unscrew the covers to access the light bulbs. As I pulled the chandelier in and rotated it around the chain, I heard a sound. I looked up. I saw its ceiling cap became unscrewed and the socket came off the reinforced crossbar that holds the light up. Well, that just made everything much more complicated. It was not the first time I have done this job, but in this particular incident, it turned out to be not as easy and high reward as I thought it would be. (I ended up spending a few hours trying to figure out how to get up there to screw it back in with a friend a few days later.) But there are other things in this world that claim to be easy and high reward. In recent times, the budget and mainstream SSD market has grown considerably, convincing the average user that swapping out your mechanical hard drive for a solid state drive is an easy task that will grant you exponentially higher system performance. The Crucial BX500 480GB is one of such products. Will it be as easy and as high reward as it advertises, or will it be like my chandelier incident? Read on to find out!

Our review unit of the Crucial BX500 480GB solid state drive arrived in a FedEx branded bubble envelope from the company's American headquarters in Meridian, Idaho, USA. Meridian is located between Boise and Nampa, which is under two hours of flying time from Calgary if a direct flight exists. Using the speedy International Priority service, it only took a day to get to us here in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. As always, everything arrived in excellent condition for our review today.

Crucial's retail package designs has always been about business, and the BX500 is no different. The evolutionary changes continue with the latest budget product from the company and carries the corporate theme as with the MX500. The simple, environmentally friendly box is the same shape and size as everything we have seen before. It uses a relatively compact, thin square box to deliver the SSD into the hands of the consumers, with the contents and other miscellaneous information printed on the back. As you can see in our photo above, the box art evokes a strong business feel. The dark blue gradient background is plain for the easily distracted. In fact, there is not even a photo of the drive. Crucial's logo and slogan can be found at the top, while the BX500 branding, 2.5" solid state drive description, and 480GB capacity is printed at the bottom.

Before we move on, let us take a look at the features and specifications of the Crucial BX500 480GB, as obtained from the manufacturer's website:

Form Factor: 2.5-inch internal SSD

Total Capacity: 480GB

Warranty: Limited 3-year

Specs: 480GB 2.5-inch internal SSD • SATA 6.0Gb/s • 540 MB/s Read, 500 MB/s Write

Series: BX500

Product Line: Client SSD

Interface: SATA 6.0Gb/s

Device Type: Internal Solid State Drive

Unit Height: 7mm

Form Factor: 2.5-inch (7mm)

Package Content: Crucial BX500 3D NAND SATA 2.5-inch SSD, Acronis True Image for Crucial

Crucial does not usually included a whole lot of stuff out of the box, and the BX500 480GB carries forward this tradition. This no-frills approach keeps the retail box small and excess waste low, and I am always appreciative of companies who do not throw in extras for the sake of throwing in extras. This is not to mention it is a budget drive, so a smaller bundle means more savings. The drive itself is placed inside a clear plastic shell. The only other item included is a getting started guide with Acronis' True Image cloning software activation key printed on it.

Page Index

1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications2. A Closer Look, Test System 3. Benchmark: AIDA64 Disk Benchmark 4. Benchmark: ATTO Disk Benchmark 5. Benchmark: Crystal Disk Mark 3.0 6. Benchmark: HD Tach 3.0.1.0 7. Benchmark: HD Tune Pro 5.70 8. Benchmark: PassMark PerformanceTest 9.0 9. Benchmark: PCMark Vantage 10. Benchmark: PCMark 8 11. Conclusion