Crucial MX200 500GB

Crucial MX200 500GB Review – At a mere 69 cents per Gigabyte, the MX200 is easily the most affordable SSD in our roundup, coming in well below the price of other SATA 3 drives. Crucial has positioned this as the perfect entry-level drive, yet has managed to deliver a budget package that isn’t embarrassingly slow.

Marvell has been tasked with supplying the SSD controller on this drive, in the form of the 88SS9189 SATA controller. This is used to control the 16nm synchronous MLC NAND memory used on the drive, and it uses Dynamic Write Acceleration which dynamically switches the MLC memory to SLC on the fly. RAIN and Exclusive Data Defense are two of the techniques used by this drive to stop data corruption, and it even includes 256-bit AES encryption, which is outstanding for a drive of this price. Acronis True Image HD software is also included in the box, making cloning your old drive to the MX200 an absolute breeze.

When put through our Anvil Storage benchmark, the MX200 churned out some surprisingly good results. While it was never the fastest in one test, its overall figures illustrate well-balanced performance across the board. Most surprising was its IOPS numbers, with 4K QD4 IOPS in particular teaching the other SATA 3 products a thing or two.

With a decent three year warranty, solid overall performance and the inclusion of free cloning software, Crucial has delivered an excellent first SSD for those on a relatively tight budget.

Pros

• Solid overall performance
• Free cloning software
• 3 year warranty

Cons

• Not the fastest on the block

Crucial MX200 500GB Specifications

• Brand: Crucial
• Form Factor: 2.5-inch internal SSD
• Capacity: 500GB
• Warranty: Limited 3-year
• Specs: 500GB 2.5-inch internal SSD • SATA 6.0Gb/s • 555 MB/s Read, 500 MB/s Write
• Series: MX200
• Product Line: Client SSD
• Interface: SATA 6.0Gb/s
• Price : $272
• Product page : http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/ct500mx200ssd1