Tech Story | CRUCIAL MX Series SSD Review and Benchmark Test - User POV

This is a non technical review from a regular users point of view who did installation in his old laptop and ran some benchmark test.

Best SSD drives 2020:
Crucial MX500 2TB.
Samsung 860 EVO 1TB.
WD Blue 3D NAND.
Kingston UV500 SSD.
HP S700 Pro.
Gigabyte UD Pro 512GB.
SanDisk Ultra 3D.
Samsung 360 Evo 4TB
Samsung 870 EVO 1TB

Buying an SSD is a great way to upgrade almost any one- to five-year-old computer that has a traditional hard drive, and these drives should be the default choice for anyone building or buying a new computer. SSDs are much faster than hard drives at everything from booting to loading games to opening and switching between apps, and today’s SSDs are larger, faster, and much cheaper than the SSDs of yesteryear. In general, you should spend the money on a drive only if you plan on keeping your computer for at least another year, or if you’re buying a drive for a new computer or a laptop you just bought; there’s no sense in upgrading a machine that you’re about to replace.

If your computer already has an SSD, the only real reason to get a different SSD is if you’re running out of room on the first one. If your drive is consistently more than 75 or 80 percent full, upgrading to a larger SSD is worth considering, since full SSDs are slower and wear out faster than drives with plenty of free space. Most people wouldn’t notice a speed difference between two different SSDs unless they were writing huge files every single day—editing 4K video files, working with huge spreadsheets and databases, or designing in AutoCAD or other 3D-modeling software—and they cared about a few seconds’ worth of improvement. Regardless of which SSD you buy, you’re not likely to notice any lag when you’re firing up most apps or launching games.

In December, the 1TB Crucial MX500 impressed us with its combination of great performance for a SATA drive and an aggressive introductory price. Since then, Micron has launched the rest of the Crucial MX500 product line, and several other new SSDs have been announced. The most important new competitors aren't any of the many drives shown at CES, but the new Samsung 860 PRO and 860 EVO that launched last week. So far, we have only tested the premium Samsung 860 PRO, but it is clear that the improvements from Samsung's 64-layer 3D NAND process and their updated SATA SSD controller will affect where the 860 EVO stands. The handful of performance records set by the 1TB MX500 didn't last long.

The MX500 is the first Crucial drive based on Micron's 64-layer 3D TLC NAND, and is the second generation of Crucial's mainstream MX series to use TLC NAND instead of MLC NAND. The MX500 breaks from previous MX generations by using Silicon Motion's SM2258 controller instead of a Marvell controller, but all the usual features of the MX series are still present. This includes both TCG Opal encryption support and Crucial's partial power loss protection, features which are uncommon on mainstream or budget consumer SSDs

The Crucial MX500 uses the older SATA interface, which means it’s slower than the other drives we recommend but also more universally compatible. Whereas NVMe SSDs work in most two- or three-year-old computers, a SATA SSD works in computers well over a decade old. The MX500 is inexpensive and considerably faster than any spinning hard disk, it has a five-year warranty, and it supports full-disk encryption. It also comes in both 2.5-inch and M.2 SATA versions, so it can fit in almost any desktop or laptop computer. But if you own a newer computer, the WD Blue SN550 offers better performance for the same price, and the BarraCuda 510 offers even better speeds for just a little more money.

2.5-inch SATA SSDs are made to fit into older or cheaper laptops that use a 2.5-inch spinning hard drive, or older desktops that lack a slot for M.2 drives. SATA (which refers to both the connector type and the interface protocol, in this case) is older and slower than NVMe, but SATA SSDs are still noticeably faster than SATA hard drives, and they’re a worthwhile upgrade for most computers built after 2011 or 2012.

M.2 SATA SSDs use the same connector as M.2 NVMe SSDs, and most computers that can use NVMe drives can also use M.2 SATA drives (though there are computers with M.2 connectors that can use only SATA drives; consult the Crucial upgrade advisor page for specifics). M.2 SATA SSDs used to be good budget options for any computer with an M.2 slot, but modern NVMe drives cost roughly the same and perform much better—use an M.2 SATA SSD only if you have to.

mSATA SSDs look a bit like shorter, wider M.2 drives. If you have a laptop made between approximately 2012 and 2014 and it doesn’t contain a 2.5-inch hard drive, you may need an mSATA drive. (These drives are relatively rare, and none of our picks come in an mSATA variety,