Crucial M550 Review: 128GB, 256GB, 512GB and 1TB Models Tested
by Kristian Vättö on March 18, 2014 8:00 AM ESTFinal Words
There are so many reasons why the M550 could be one of the best SSDs in the market. It has the best-in-class encryption support (along with Samsung 840 EVO) and it's also one of the only consumer-grade drives with power loss protection. Heck, it even supports DevSleep to enable low-power states in mobile platforms. Basically it has all the bells and whistles one could hope from a client drive. But there is one big "but": the performance. The M550 is supposed to be Crucial's high performance offering but compared to other high-end drives in the market, the performance is average at best. It's an upgrade over the M500, that's for sure, but that's not enough to make it to the medals podium.
The biggest Achilles' Heel of the M550 is its performance consistency. Given that it has been the focus of other manufacturers for the last year or so, it seems odd that Crucial hasn't done much to improve in this area. It's again better than the M500 consistency but compared to what SanDisk has been able to do with the same controller, the M550 doesn't impress. The potential saving grace would be pricing, so let's look there.
| NewEgg Price Comparison (3/17/2014) | ||||
| 120/128GB | 240/256GB | 480/512GB | 960GB/1TB | |
| Crucial M550 (MSRP) | $100 | $169 | $337 | $531 |
| Crucial M500 | $75 | $120 | $275 | $440 |
| Intel SSD 730 | - | $240 | $450 | - |
| Intel SSD 530 | $115 | $180 | $399 | - |
| OCZ Vector 150 | $138 | $190 | $390 | - |
| OCZ Vertex 460 | $100 | $185 | $360 | - |
| Samsung SSD 840 EVO | $95 | $160 | $265 | $554 |
| Samsung SSD 840 Pro | $119 | $208 | $420 | - |
| SanDisk Extreme II | $121 | $250 | $500 | - |
| Seagate SSD 600 | $105 | $170 | $380 | - |
The positive side is that pricing is extremely competitive. The M500 is already lowballing every other SSD in our comparison and the M550 comes in as a close second—and we expect street pricing to be lower than the MSRPs we've listed. The 840 EVO and Seagate SSD 600 are the only ones that beat the M550 in price but that's only at specific capacities (512GB) and with the current large sales that are going on. If Crucial is able to keep the pricing as competitive as our comparison suggests, other OEMs will definitely have a hard time competing with the M500 and M550.
All in all, I'm not sure how I should feel about the M550. On the one hand it feels a bit redundant to release a "high performance" drive that in reality is only average, but on the other hand, does it really matter if the price is right? I think not, but my concern is whether the M550 is fast enough to justify the added cost over the M500.
If you're a light user and price is the key purchase factor, then the M500 suffices and saves you money. However, if you're a power user and want performance, then it's better to look for the SanDisk Extreme II or Seagate SSD 600, or grab the Samsung 840 EVO 500GB on sale. The M550 kind of falls in between the two user groups and I'm not sure if there's any significant market there. For people who are not entirely sure whether the M500 is fast enough for their needs, the M550 is certainly a good and safe choice but I would have liked to see something competitive with the SanDisk Extreme II instead, even if the result was higher cost. It's not fast enough to close the gap, so the result ends up being a rehash of what we've already seen.
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Hrel - Wednesday, April 2, 2014 - link
no response? Cause I'd really like this explained. Consistency in these charts stays WAY over 100.shatteredx - Thursday, May 8, 2014 - link
Yeah I'm also confused by the conclusions in this article. The M550 consistency numbers look pretty... consistent!Wolfpup - Monday, March 31, 2014 - link
I can't remember if the M500 has capacitors to deal with power loss or not...suppose I should reread the review. Anyway I choose my 960GB M500 because at the time Intel was using Sandforce controllers, and there's no way I'd use a different brand when Crucial/Micron and Intel are making drives.While there are probably theoretically faster drives than my M500, it's not going to be anything obvious. I can't even really tell that my M500 is any faster than my M4 even though it is on paper.
960GB on a relatively affordable SSD is awesome! Its literally at the point where I'd have had to go with a smaller drive to get a 7200RPM mechanical drive LOL
DKN - Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - link
Latecomer to the discussion. I'm currently running a 240GB M500 drive in an old Lenovo T61p (Core2 Duo T8100). Changing from a 7200RPM HD to the SSD made all the difference in the world as far as day to day use of the laptop.Some things, like logging on are about 5x faster than with the HD. Other things are 10x or more faster, making this old laptop work better than some i7 machines with HDs in the office.
Note that the T61p originally supported SATA 1 and with a BIOS upgrade, it's now SATA 2, so the transfer rates are in line with the capability of the SSD hardware. Purchasing a drive that can support SATA 3 transfer rates wouldn't do anything for the performance of this computer.
The bottom line? While the enthusiast market is lusting for the latest i7 and graphics processor, there is a large market that just needs something better to make their computers work faster.
I'm considering upgrading my two laptops at home with M500 drives. The slower machine with a 240GB and the faster (i7, 2nd Gen) with a 480GB.
Crucial's decision to continue to market the M500 series makes perfect sense for 90% of the users, even if it isn't as fast as the M550.
stevo5800 - Thursday, April 17, 2014 - link
Theres a 60% increase from an M500 and M550 random write but you guys say there is no increase in performance? LOL The average user probably just uses Windows and a few games, so all these drives would perform around the same in the end. Crucial's biggest issue was the lack of higher write speeds. On M500 and earlier write speeds where really low compared to other drives. Plus Crucial also beats some of the other drives in some of the tests here. Almost every SSD manufacturer makes at least 1 decent SSD now a days. Let's not also forget the M550 is brand new and there is still the chance of improvement in some speeds with a new firmware update, we've seen this before. Heck I still find my M4 speedy and it's got way lower specs then the M550. Personally I'm buying a M550 256GB, I'm going for write speeds.AhDah - Thursday, May 15, 2014 - link
Hello all,I want to buy my first SSD
I'm deciding between Crucial M550 1TB and Samsung 840 Evo 1TB
On the Samsung 840 Evo, the TRIM validation graph shows a tremendous performance drop after a few gigs of writes, even after TRIM pass, the write speed is only 150MBps.
Does this mean once the drive is 75%-85% filled up, the write speed will always be slow?
Crucial M550 on the other hand, has a consistent write speed according to the TRIM validation graph.
Should I get the Crucial M550 because of this?
thanks!
critter13 - Thursday, May 15, 2014 - link
I have a 2007 MBP which is obviously SATA II. Is it worth getting a m550 or 840 EVO or will I not see the extra speed? should I save a little money and just go with the m500?SyndromeOCZ - Friday, May 30, 2014 - link
Seriously why do you make the title of the article a link? Ok if it was a link that actually went anywhere but a link that goes directly to the page I'm viewing. Doing this makes it about 1000 times harder to copy paste parts out of the title, forcing me to have to go through the article to find the part I want to copy. Which in turn forces me to want to never come back to Anandtech again. Just my $0.02ayejay_nz - Sunday, February 15, 2015 - link
Any word on whether the MU02 firmware update, released 01/8/2015, for this drive boosted performance?The release notes can be found here - http://www.crucial.com/wcsstore/CrucialSAS/firmwar...
I'm not sure if the items they've listed as improving would increase performance?
pokazene_maslo - Tuesday, October 3, 2017 - link
In changelog they mentioned improved power efficiency. Could anyone test power consumption in idle after FW upgrade?