The Crucial MX300 750GB SSD Review: Micron's 3D NAND Arrives

Mixed Random Read/Write Performance

The mixed random I/O benchmark starts with a pure read test and gradually increases the proportion of writes, finishing with pure writes. The queue depth is 3 for the entire test and each subtest lasts for 3 minutes, for a total test duration of 18 minutes. As with the pure random write test, this test is restricted to a 16GB span of the drive, which is empty save for the 16GB test file.

Despite poor random read speeds, the MX300 is only slightly slower than the MX200 on mixed random workloads, and is faster than most MLC drives.

Once more setting a power usage record, the MX300 is more efficient than even the BX100.

Crucial MX300 750GBADATA Premier SP550 480GBADATA XPG SX930 480GBCorsair Neutron XT 480GBCrucial BX100 1TBCrucial BX100 500GBCrucial BX200 480GBCrucial BX200 960GBCrucial MX100 512GBCrucial MX200 1TBCrucial MX200 500GBOCZ Trion 150 480GBOCZ Trion 150 960GBOCZ Vector 180 480GBOCZ Vector 180 960GBPNY CS1311 480GBPNY CS2211 480GBSamsung 850 EVO 1TBSamsung 850 EVO 500GBSamsung 850 Pro 1TBSamsung 850 Pro 512GBSanDisk Extreme Pro 480GBSanDisk Extreme Pro 960GBSanDisk X400 1TB

The MX300 manages to never decrease in performance when the proportion or writes increases, showing that its SLC write caching is working very effectively. Power consumption doesn't begin to increase until the test is almost completely writes.

Mixed Sequential Read/Write Performance

The mixed sequential access test covers the entire span of the drive and uses a queue depth of one. It starts with a pure read test and gradually increases the proportion of writes, finishing with pure writes. Each subtest lasts for 3 minutes, for a total test duration of 18 minutes. The drive is filled before the test starts.

Since SATA drives all perform about the same on sequential reads, rankings on this test are determined mainly by sequential write performance and whether the controller can process the mixed workload effectively. The MX300 is slower than the SanDisk X400 but faster than the other planar TLC drives.

With another third place ranking for power usage, the MX300 beats all the planar TLC drives on efficiency but is unremarkable by MLC standards.

Crucial MX300 750GBADATA Premier SP550 480GBADATA XPG SX930 480GBCorsair Neutron XT 480GBCrucial BX100 1TBCrucial BX100 500GBCrucial BX200 480GBCrucial BX200 960GBCrucial MX100 512GBCrucial MX200 1TBCrucial MX200 500GBOCZ Trion 150 480GBOCZ Trion 150 960GBOCZ Vector 180 480GBOCZ Vector 180 960GBPNY CS1311 480GBPNY CS2211 480GBSamsung 850 EVO 1TBSamsung 850 EVO 500GBSamsung 850 Pro 1TBSamsung 850 Pro 512GBSanDisk Extreme Pro 480GBSanDisk Extreme Pro 960GBSanDisk X400 1TB

The MX300 bottoms out around 126MB/s which would be respectable for a planar TLC drive, but the MX200 never drops below 200MB/s.