Crucial addresses some subtle technical points in the MX100 with a new drive
I’d be the first to accept that not everyone is in the market for a £366 1TB SSD, although the fact Crucial now makes one strongly suggests that there is a market.
This is the flagship design in its new MX200 series. Building on the positive reactions to the MX100, it has looked to address the weak points of that generation with the new drive.
However, testing this unit I ran into some problems that aren’t really of Crucial’s making but represent well where SATA technology and SSDs are currently.
All three MX200 drives are rated to 550MB/s reading and 500MB/s writing, but getting that level out of any of my systems proved challenging. My cap on whatever system I use appears to be about 532MB/s reading, though I did manage nearly 514MB/s writes – faster than specified.
The problem isn’t the drive; it’s how close this hardware takes a system to full saturation of the SATA-3 bus, a problem that only SATA-3.2 or PCIe-connected M.2 drives will actually resolve.
To be fair, these numbers aren’t far away from what the MX100 could do, so where is the justification for MX200 customers? There’s a pretty big one if you hammer your SSD drives hard and would prefer they didn’t expire in the middle of a critical exercise.
The 256GB MX200 has roughly the same TBW (total bytes written) as the MX100 had, at 70TB. However, you can double that with the new 512MB MX200 and quadruple it with this 1TB option. That’s a whopping 320TB, or 175GB every day for five years.
Obviously, I can’t test this assertion unless I wanted to bring you this review in 2020, but if it was horribly wrong it would probably undermine the company’s profitability. However, given this predicted reliability, it does seem a little odd that Crucial only gave it a three-year warranty, whereas Samsung is now offering five years on its 850 EVO design.
Along with the 2.5” SSD package covered here, Crucial also has MX200 modules in mSATA and M.2 (Type 2260 and 2280) form factors. However, in the other form factors the maximum size is 500GB, whereas the 2.5” drive has a 1TB option.
When the MX100 arrived, it was pitched as not replacing the flagship M550 but providing a more cost effective second string. The MX200 looks very like it just took the M550 position as the SSD weapon of choice in this arsenal.
The MX200 is a generally positive story all round, because not only does it deliver 100K IOPS even in the entry level 250GB drive, but it also offers significantly higher levels of durability in the larger capacities.
And only ten months on from the MX100, it's also about 50% cheaper.
The 1TB MX200 is still probably more than most people would probably want to spend on a desktop/laptop drive, but the 250GB and 520GB look highly desirable for anyone wanting an effective upgrade. Mark Pickavance
High performance, massive capacity and great endurance.