The Corsair MP400 1TB QLC NVMe SSD: A Quick Review

Conclusion: Entry Level QLC

The Corsair MP400 has proved to be a competent budget NVMe SSD in its 1TB version. The recent crop of drives like the Corsair MP400 and Sabrent Rocket has raised the bar for consumer QLC SSDs. That being said, the a 1TB QLC drive is relatively low capacity for the controller, and there are performance compromises that go along with that (compared to the 8TB relatives we looked at last week). At mainstream capacities they can compete against many budget TLC SSDs, and at the higher capacities where there are few or no budget TLC options, many of the benefits of QLC NAND come into play.

The MP400 sits on the boundary between a good TLC drive and an entry level QLC drive. It performs as expected, and the key arbiter in going for this drive is going to be in the cost.

When Does QLC Make Sense? An Overview

Based on our testing, QLC drive capacities below 1TB (such as 500 GB), we recommend avoiding QLC SSDs. These smaller capacities are where DRAMless TLC SSDs are clearly the better value, and more mainstream TLC drives with DRAM are often on sale for entry-level prices as well. Above 1TB, the DRAMless TLC options are few and far between, and we don't expect any of them to handle heavier workloads as easily as 2+TB QLC drives with DRAM do.

At the 1TB capacity point we're focused on today, the conclusion is not as clear. The Corsair MP400 generally outperformed the low-end TLC drives we have to compare against, though our collection is missing a few of the best-performing budget TLC options on the market today. It is pretty clear that DRAMless TLC SSDs have the edge in power efficiency.

For general purpose consumer desktop usage, both QLC and TLC entry-level NVMe drives offer better performance than SATA SSDs, and with little or no price premium. Which kind of entry-level NVMe drive is the better really comes down to day to day pricing.

The handful of multi-TB QLC drives using the Phison E12S controller are competing not just on price, but on the vendor's ability to keep the drive in stock. From day to day, we're seeing the best-priced models quickly end up backordered, so there's clearly demand for these massive SSDs but the prices should drift downward a bit as these drives become more widely available from multiple brands. The Corsair MP400 hasn't been on the market for as long as the Sabrent Rocket Q, so the latter currently has it beat on pricing and availability. Microcenter's Inland Platinum QLC drive seems to still be the cheapest Phison E12S+QLC drive on the market, with especially attractive pricing for the 4TB model.

Even though the proliferation of new QLC alternatives has broadened the scope of the entry-level NVMe market segment, these drives are still almost always overshadowed by the best deals in the more mainstream NVMe market segment that is dominated by drives with TLC and DRAM and 8-channel controllers. Right now with holiday pricing, it is very easy to score a drive that doesn't have any of the acute weaknesses of DRAMless or QLC models, without paying a premium. The best example is ADATA's XPG SX8100, a TLC drive with Realtek's 8-channel controller with DRAM. The SX8100 is one of the few TLC models with a 4TB option so it competes against high-capacity QLC models, and beats many of them on price at all capacity points.

Our next look into consumer QLC SSDs will be Sabrent's Rocket Q4, the successor to the Rocket Q that adopts the Phison E16 PCIe 4.0 controller. Even though the newer Phison E18 Gen4 controller is starting to ship in high-end SSDs, The E18 is probably overkill for QLC models, and it's certainly more expensive. The E16 controller may stick around for a while to offer a more affordable path toward better QLC performance.

Next Review: SSD Benchmark Suite Update for PCIe Gen 4

This review marks the end of our current generation of SSD testing equipment and procedures. Our new overhauled test suite designed for PCIe Gen4 SSDs will be launching soon, along with a new section in Bench for the new test results. The existing SSD18 results will remain available with no further updates. Many recent drives we have already reviewed will be re-tested on our new SSD test suite and their results will be added to the new SSD21 section as they are completed.