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 - Wednesday, March 19, 2014 - link
Oh snap, i forgot to reply to @beginner99 :)emn13 - Wednesday, March 19, 2014 - link
The conclusion of this article is at odds with the benchmarks it includes. There's just a 20% performance difference on the heavy-load test between the 840 EVO and M550 1TB drives, less in lighter workloads. I don't believe a 20% performance difference is perceptible in practice, unless you're really doing long-duration purely disk-limited batch processing, and even then it's not exactly a very interesting difference.The appropriate conclusion here is: *any* reasonably modern SSD is more that fast enough that even a heavy workload won't cause user-noticable performance differences. It just doesn't matter. Other factors (e.g. power consumption, power loss protection, price, reliability, support) are what matter.
The article's conclusion simply doesn't make sense given the numbers shown here.
hojnikb - Wednesday, March 19, 2014 - link
Well, there are some reasonably modern ssds, that user WILL notice the difference. Crucial V4 for expamle..Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, March 19, 2014 - link
Okay, I'll let Anand know that we no longer need to do reviews because all modern devices are already capable of Facebook, email and text processing.In a more serious note, it's true that for light users any modern SSD is fine and that is what I said in the final page:
"If you're a light user and price is the key purchase factor, then the M500 suffices and saves you money."
And that is the biggest problem I have with the M550. The M500 already does it for the mainstream user group and to be honest it is the drive I would buy given the current prices.
However, the M550 doesn't cut it for the enthusiast/professional group who want the best IO performance. It does the job for sure but the enthusiast/professional kind of people usually like the idea of having the best money can buy, even if the differences in real world aren't that big. On the other hand, that's also the user group that can actually take advantage of the extra performance.
I would argue that there is no middle ground in the SSD market. It's either the mainstream market where price is all that matters and that's where the M500 fits in perfectly. The high-end market is where the performance and features are the main element but the M550 isn't competitive there. Everything in the middle are kinda purposeless - some people will always buy them but they don't have any clear inducement to make them alluring.
P.S. Don't take the first line too personally or seriously. Sometimes the comments just make me feel like everything is already enough for everyone and we don't need improved hardware.
hojnikb - Wednesday, March 19, 2014 - link
Yeah exactly. m550 really seems kinda redundant (not implying, that better performance isn't good), considering its suppost to be a high performance drive, yet it really compets with mainstream at best.I think crucial need to work on firmware department, because as we've seen, there's lots to be squeezed out of this marvell controler. They already have great nand, they just need to make firmware better and they could easily compete in the highend segment.
Well atleast thats what i think anyway..
Cerb - Sunday, March 23, 2014 - link
Given that read and write latency is consistently higher than other SSDs, I'd bet much of the speed limitations are due to RAIN, which has to be handled in software by the SSD's controller. If so, newer faster controllers are what it would take to improve the speed by any great amount, without sacrificing that feature.emn13 - Wednesday, March 19, 2014 - link
I'm not saying you shouldn't review these things - I'm extremely interested in the results of these reviews. I'm saying that your own results don't back up your conclusions. It's not just light workloads where the difference is hard to notice - the anandtech 2013 "destroyer" - IIRC which writes a considerable amount, quite a bit more that a light, normal desktop workload (or frankly even a fairly heavy desktop workload) only shows a 20% performance difference. The performance consistency numbers at the steady state are just below 5000 iops, and that's actually slightly better than the EVO 840.Notably, there *are* SSD's which are quite a bit slower, and I'm sure there will be SSD's (or are, if you pay enough) that outclass the M550 - but I'm just not seeing that in these results.
Sorry if I came across as ungracious - it's a little unfair in that I'm commenting now in that it seems I think the coverage is poor. But I'm commenting now, because this is one of the rare articles where I think anandtech's conclusions aren't reasonable. I love your coverage, particularly of SSD's, and have gladly learned a lot from all the in-depth analysis you've done.
So please don't take this personally (I may have exagerrated) - I really don't understand how given essentially equivalent performance to the 840 EVO in practical terms (and slightly better @ steady state) you can call the performance all that disappointing. It's not a top-performer; but then, it's clearly aimed at the larger capacity/lower-price, and then I really don't see how this conclusion stacks up.
emn13 - Wednesday, March 19, 2014 - link
Hmm, I've gotta admit however that the smaller variants are a lot more disappointing. I'm kind of surprised how *much* slower they are - the 256GB version is less than half as fast on the destroyer, which is really will be noticable :-).Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, March 19, 2014 - link
Oh, absolutely not. Justified feedback like yours is always welcome :)I guess the key here is that I was expecting this to be a high performance drive because that's what Crucial was touting when they briefed us. Obviously I expected the performance to be close to drives like SanDisk Extreme II and OCZ Vector 150 because those are what I categorize as high performance drives. However, what we got is a drive with mediocre performance that didn't meet the expectations I had in my mind, so I can't say I'm satisfied.
That doesn't mean the M550 is bad because the price is very competitive but I still think it's rather redundant because the M500 is even more competitive in price. If the M550 was to replace the M500, then the scenario (and hence conclusion) would be different but as it stands the M500 will continue to be the king of value.
The EVO is different in this regard because it was always supposed to be a value drive and Samsung has the 840 Pro to cater the high performance market.
nick2crete - Thursday, March 20, 2014 - link
Kristian ,do you think that these performance issues can be minimized/fixed with new firmware(s) from Crucial ?