The Crucial MX500 1TB SSD Review: Breaking The SATA Mold
by Billy Tallis on December 19, 2017 8:00 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench - Light
Our Light storage test has relatively more sequential accesses and lower queue depths than The Destroyer or the Heavy test, and it's by far the shortest test overall. It's based largely on applications that aren't highly dependent on storage performance, so this is a test more of application launch times and file load times. This test can be seen as the sum of all the little delays in daily usage, but with the idle times trimmed to 25ms it takes less than half an hour to run. Details of the Light test can be found here. As with the ATSB Heavy test, this test is run with the drive both freshly erased and empty, and after filling the drive with sequential writes.
The Crucial MX300 performs very well on the Light test with an average data rate that the MX500 cannot quite match, but the MX500 doesn't lose as much performance when the test is run on a full drive.
The average and 99th percentile latency scores of the Crucial MX500 are largely unremarkable, though the 99th percentile latency is near the high end of the normal range. The MX500 is a substantial improvement over the MX300 when it comes to full-drive performance.
The average read latency of the Crucial MX500 on the Light test is close to the Samsung 850 PRO and EVO when the test is run on an empty drive, but is merely average when the drives are full. The average write latency is a bit below average in both cases, but the full-drive penalty is much reduced compared to the MX300.
As with the average read and write latency scores, the 99th percentile read and write scores fall within the normal range. The 99th percentile read latency is a bit better than average while the 99th percentile write latency is worse than most drives, but the MX500 isn't an outlier in either direction.
The power consumption of the MX500 ranks a bit better on the Light test than it did on the Heavy test. The Crucial MX300 is still substantially better, and the slow but DRAMless Toshiba TR200 holds on to a comfortable lead. The Samsung 850 PRO and EVO are in last place.
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ddrіver - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
@Arnulf, Europe is a civilized land.sonny73n - Wednesday, December 20, 2017 - link
You remind me of the path I crossed with Samsung customer service about my 840 Evo (2 months old then).Dear valued customer,
Please contact your seller (Newegg)....
We acknowledged the issue. Please wait for firmware update....
The worst of all is that all their customer service reps don't know shit but they insisted to guide me, a veteran in IT field, how to install an SSD in my laptop. After firmware update, BSOD still happened but less frequent. Best thing I did was throwing that sucker in the trash.
Forget Shamesung and their shameless fanboys. This MX500 is a good deal but I prefer the BX300 because of MLC over TLC.
Samus - Wednesday, December 20, 2017 - link
The BX300 is such an incredibly good drive. I've outfitted 20 office PC's with them since they were introduced, no problems whatsoever.ddrіver - Wednesday, December 20, 2017 - link
@sonny73n, I'll just repost this here: https://www.usenix.org/conference/fast16/technical...Short version: the difference between SLC and MLC is almost indistinguishable. Don't imagine that MLC vs. TLC will be a world of difference either. Not with new drives.
Samus - Wednesday, December 20, 2017 - link
I had one of the worst warranty experiences ever with the 840 EVO years ago. Haven't given Samsung money since. OCZ and Mushkin, and Crucial for that matter, all have advanced RMA options and very smooth exchange processes. Crucial offers data recovery starting at $200.Samsung doesn't even return initial emails and they lie through their teeth on the phone, if you can even get ahold of the right person after being in a transfer loop for 30 minutes.
Cooe - Wednesday, December 20, 2017 - link
Recently??? Lol try well over 3 years ago. The 850 EVO's been using Samsung's V-NAND (V = vertical, as in 3D) pretty much since it's inception. In fact, they have used 3 (iirc) different types of V-NAND (differing in layer density) so far through production. You need to get with the program lol. Micron's slapping the EVO upside the head here, and I say that as someone who's bought more EVO's then I can count.lilmoe - Wednesday, December 20, 2017 - link
They just need to lower their damn price, and they'd still be good to go. Their 850 series is tried and proven, with a much better warranty, which is a significant advantage over newly released SATA models.Just cut the 850 Pro's price in half already Samsung.... I don't mind if they even cut the 10 year warranty in half dammit.
bill.rookard - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
Agreed. Performance is pretty decent for a change! And having the 1TB available at the 250$ price point is also pretty aggressive as I'm sure it'll come down a stitch more in the next month or two.Samus - Wednesday, December 20, 2017 - link
The M550, MX100, MX200 and MX300 have always been decent contenders to Samsung 830, 840, 850 and 860, often priced lower and in the same performance bracket. Support and reliability are excellent.Chaitanya - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
surprising crucial decided to keep mx line on tlc nand while bx was upgraded to mlc nand.