Crucial‘s most awaited M500 Solid State Drive is now available. If you were not able to read the previous news about this SSD, the Crucial M500 is a high capacity 2.5-inch SSD that comes in an affordable price. Usually a 1TB SSD, like the OCZ Octane 1TB will cost your around $2,500. But with the Crucial M500 960GB, it will only cost you $599.99! Too good to be true right? But it’s real. At the end of this article, I’ll show you were you can buy the new M500 for less than the SRP price. Check more details about these new budget friendly SSD and check out some Crucial M500 reviews below.
Crucial M500 Features
The Crucial M500 Solid State Drives offers significantly faster speeds when compared to a hard drive. It features terabyte-class capacity with increase response times and advanced feature set. It uses Microns’ 20nm MLC NAND flash and a SATA 6Gbps controller paired with Micron’s custom firmware to produce up to 80,000 IOPS (input/output operations per second).
The Crucial M500 comes in four different sizes; 120GB, 240GB, 480GB and 960GB. All of the M500 SSD drives includes top-level AES 256-bit hardware encryption technology ( with TCG Opal 2.0 and IEEE 1667 standards), advanced controller technology and Micron custom firmware, adaptive thermal protection, and extensive quality and reliability testing built into every drive.
The M500 series are compatible with PC (Windows) and Mac systems, and comes with a Three year limited warranty.
Crucial M500 Specifications
Below are the specifications of the M500 solid state drives:
Interface: SATA 6Gbps
Form Factor: 2.5-inch, m-SATA, and M.2
NAND: 20nm Micron MLC NND
Controller: Marvell 88SS9187
Life Expectancy: 1.2 million hours mean time to failure (MTTF)
Endurance: 72TB total bytes written (TBW), equal to 40GB per day for 5 years
Operating Temperature: 0°C to 70°C
Compliance: RoHS, CE, FCC, UL, BSMI, C-TICK, KCC RRL, W.E.E.E., TUV VCCI, IC
Firmware: Field upgradable firmware
Product Health Monitoring: Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (SMART) commands
| Capacity | 120GB | 240GB | 480GB | 960GB |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sequential Read | 500 MBps | 500 MBps | 500 MBps | 500 MBps |
| Sequential Write | 130 MBps | 250 MBps | 400 MBps | 400 MBps |
| Random Read | 62,000 IOPS | 72,000 IOPS | 80,000 IOPS | 80,000 IOPS |
| Random Write | 35,000 IOPS | 60,000 IOPS | 80,000 IOPS | 80,000 IOPS |
Crucial M500 Reviews
Solid State Drives are undeniably significantly faster than any hard drives currently in the market. They are perfect for multitasking, demanding and heavy-on-resource software, and if you simply want your computer to boot up or wake up faster.
But SSD tends to be pricey specially if you want more than 500GB or a 1TB capacity. This is where the Crucial M500 comes in. It’s an ideal solution specially for those who are on a budget, and yet want a SSD with huge capacity.
But what about its performance? How fast is the M500 compared to its predecessor (the popular Crucial m4 SSD) and its competitors like the Samsung 840 Pro. I have been reading various Crucial M500 reviews, specially the 960GB capacity and basically the reviews are all saying the same thing.
According to the Crucial M500 reviews I have read, the M500 offers a high quality SSD for a lower price. It’s not as fast as the already released SSDs in the market, but it’s not the poor performing SSD type either. It just sits somewhere in between; neither an entry level SSD nor a high end SSD.
All of the M500 series features a good solid high quality and shock proof enclosure, with high level security thanks to the TCG Opal 2.0 with 256-bit AES hardware encryption. But it seems that only with the 480GB and the 960GB M500 can you experience more performance, and larger capacity for lesser price.
Crucial M500 vs m4
You might also be thinking how does the new M500 fare with the old Crucial m4 SSD. According to the M500 reviews and benchmark tests I have read, the M500 performance is, if not slightly, better than the old m4. Specially if were are comparing the M500 960GB capacity with the 256GB or 512GB Crucial m4.
If you are not into Solid State Drives, $600 for a 960GB is rather insane or impractical, and just a waste of money. I mean you can get around 12TB of storage capacity already for a $600. Or you can get 2x WD Black 4TB Drives and still have some savings. But that’s not the point here. SSD offers more than just what a hard drive can offer.
If you are already using a SSD, and perhaps appreciate or needs the benefits of having an SSD (such as speed and security), then you might find the M500 a gem, and a bang for the buck SSD. Once you have an SSD, the only thing that you would wish for next is to have an SSD with a larger capacity, and the M500 is currently the best solution for you.
Where to Buy
You can get the following SSDs for less than the SRP price below.
Crucial M500 120GB CT120M500SSD1 get it here
Crucial M500 240GB CT240M500SSD1 get it here
Crucial M500 480GB CT480M500SSD1 get it here
Crucial M500 960GB CT960M500SSD1 get it here
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