The Crucial BX200 (480GB & 960GB) SSD Review: Crucial's First TLC NAND SSD
by Billy Tallis on November 3, 2015 9:00 AM ESTIdle Power Consumption
Many SATA drives are getting close to the limits of what our equipment can measure for power consumption. It's hard to build a meter than has sub-milliwatt accuracy and can withstand the high peak currents drawn by devices like high-performance PCIe drives. Our test rig can't measure the deepest power saving modes (DevSlp), but we can look for any red flags that the intermediate modes aren't working.
The BX200 joins the club of drives than are very poor at managing power without DevSlp support. Its active power consumption and poor efficiency are enough to exclude it from being useful for laptops, so idle power isn't as important, but it's another disapointment.
TRIM Validation
A drive that didn't correctly implement the ATA TRIM command would be very surprising to find today, but it's a quick enough check. The trimcheck tool creates and then deletes a file on the disk, and later checks if the contents of the file are still accessible. In addition to verifying that TRIM is working correctly, this test also demonstrates that, for better or worse, files that are deleted cannot be easily recovered.
Nothing about the drive is completely broken, and TRIM does indeed work.
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paulgj - Monday, November 9, 2015 - link
I just ordered a couple more BX100's 250GBdoggface - Tuesday, November 3, 2015 - link
The MX100 was just brilliant, an easy recommendation.The BX100 has been my go to value SSD, that l I recommended to many friends. The bx200 is garbage which costs more? And is about as bad as a HDD. What the hell crucial. What the hell.Luke212 - Tuesday, November 3, 2015 - link
BX100 and MX100 were great.... how can they go backward so badly?JDG1980 - Tuesday, November 3, 2015 - link
It's looking more and more as though TLC is a big flop. It doesn't seem to provide substantial price savings, and it comes at a considerable cost in performance, durability, and reliability.For a TLC drive to be worth it, it would need to be 1/2 to 1/4 the cost per gigabyte of a MLC solution on the largest drives. It then might be acceptable for people who want moderately priced bulk storage that's cheaper than standard SSDs. But that's not close to being the case now, and it may never be.
CiccioB - Wednesday, November 4, 2015 - link
Yeah, I still wonder if TLC is really reliable as producers advertise them.Samsung needed a "hack" to their 840 TLC series to solve data retention problems reducing life time.
We do not know if others have done the same without (obviously) telling publicly. And if 850 series has it under the hood.
I would go to MLC drives for few $ more. I feel them as more reliable and durable. And "feeling" is an important thing for me, as I put my data on them and saving few bucks may not really be an advantage when a TLC drive lives less then a MLC one.
For performance, I bet anyone to be able to discern differences in real life form an SSD to another. This are "synthetic" tests, where source of data is faster than SSD speed (RAM). For whatever real usage, anything comes from sources that are slower (HDD, network, optical disks). Load times into RAM is limited, as you don't usually load GB and GB into it but during a benchmark.
What it really matters is reliability, durability and price. TLC fails to make me comfortable with the first two criteria. Which, for me, are the most important ones.
CiccioB - Wednesday, November 4, 2015 - link
"This are "synthetic" tests"These are synthetic tests.
Edit button, please!
extide - Thursday, November 5, 2015 - link
Yeah it seems like you really need to go to 3D NAND to get decent TLC -- the 850 EVO's have so far been pretty much great. That significantly larger feature size really helps the TLC out.Beaver M. - Wednesday, November 4, 2015 - link
No wonder I have been skipping reviews of new SATA SSDs for a few years now. Nothing can touch the Samsung ones, and thats sad.ghanz - Wednesday, November 4, 2015 - link
Review request: Please do a review of Sandisk Plus, their current lowest tier SSDs available in 120gb and 240gb capacities.Will be interesting to see how those compares to the BX100 and BX200 in similar capacities.
Mugur - Wednesday, November 4, 2015 - link
I must buy another BX100 until the stocks will dry...