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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hojnikb - Thursday, March 20, 2014 - link
Thats only taking flash endurance into account. That doesn't mean controller wont crap on you years sooner.q.epsilon.p - Sunday, April 6, 2014 - link
Dude given that the 500M 480 and 550M 512 models are so different in price and so similar in performance I would go for the 480BG.Although the 500m 240 and 500m 120 perform much slower, but they were always slower compared to the competition so you had that information available before buying them. But considering its write speed where they really suffered I wouldn't have been much concerned.
and tbh you are not really going to notice the difference without benchmarks and the price difference is big enough to make it worth it.
Homeles - Tuesday, March 18, 2014 - link
The M500 being phased out doesn't make sense. Technically the M500 is more advanced with its 128Gb dies, despite its slower performance.elerick - Tuesday, March 18, 2014 - link
At first glance I tend to agree that this is a middle of the pack SSD. I however do seriously consider the power loss protection worth its weight in gold. I have a Samsung 830 and these days I value reliability above "good enough" performance. Once PCI-E SSD starts producing consumer priced drives I'll go that route.Death666Angel - Friday, March 21, 2014 - link
Can we boot off PCIe SSDs yet (consumer grade Windows)?hojnikb - Tuesday, March 18, 2014 - link
I really expected better consistency, but well... Maybe next time (or next firmware update ?).Although its nice to see they were able to boost write speed so much. Looks like smaller dies do pay off.
PS:
Anyone knows what native write accelaration stands for ? At first i though it was something like turbowrite (not knowing they will use 64Gbit flash) but this does not appear to be the case ...
Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, March 18, 2014 - link
Crucial specifically said they don't have an SLC or DRAM buffer and the write performance should be the same across all LBAs (the HD Tach graph shows that this is true). To me it sounds like the Native Write Acceleration is just a marketing trick aimed at Samsung and others who use buffers to boost performance.hojnikb - Tuesday, March 18, 2014 - link
Yeah it appears so.It really nice to see, that they aren't using any nasty tricks like turbowrite, just to inflate numbers.
jospoortvliet - Thursday, March 20, 2014 - link
I think turbowrite is an awesome idea - it helps exactly where consumers need it... Short write bursts. Sure, not that interesting for pro use perhaps but isn't that the point of consumer products?hojnikb - Thursday, March 20, 2014 - link
Awsome idea for marketing department maybe. Considering that your avarage joe only looks at the sequential speeds, it makes EVO compared to lets say m500 a way way better drive, even though in reality thats not the case.Its not like turbowrite is bad or anything (i think it a great solution for "slow" write devices such as TLC) but i just hate that they are fooling people (they could easily market both normal speeds and turbo speeds)