Crucial M550 Review: 128GB, 256GB, 512GB and 1TB Models Tested
by Kristian Vättö on March 18, 2014 8:00 AM ESTFinal Words
There are so many reasons why the M550 could be one of the best SSDs in the market. It has the best-in-class encryption support (along with Samsung 840 EVO) and it's also one of the only consumer-grade drives with power loss protection. Heck, it even supports DevSleep to enable low-power states in mobile platforms. Basically it has all the bells and whistles one could hope from a client drive. But there is one big "but": the performance. The M550 is supposed to be Crucial's high performance offering but compared to other high-end drives in the market, the performance is average at best. It's an upgrade over the M500, that's for sure, but that's not enough to make it to the medals podium.
The biggest Achilles' Heel of the M550 is its performance consistency. Given that it has been the focus of other manufacturers for the last year or so, it seems odd that Crucial hasn't done much to improve in this area. It's again better than the M500 consistency but compared to what SanDisk has been able to do with the same controller, the M550 doesn't impress. The potential saving grace would be pricing, so let's look there.
| NewEgg Price Comparison (3/17/2014) | ||||
| 120/128GB | 240/256GB | 480/512GB | 960GB/1TB | |
| Crucial M550 (MSRP) | $100 | $169 | $337 | $531 |
| Crucial M500 | $75 | $120 | $275 | $440 |
| Intel SSD 730 | - | $240 | $450 | - |
| Intel SSD 530 | $115 | $180 | $399 | - |
| OCZ Vector 150 | $138 | $190 | $390 | - |
| OCZ Vertex 460 | $100 | $185 | $360 | - |
| Samsung SSD 840 EVO | $95 | $160 | $265 | $554 |
| Samsung SSD 840 Pro | $119 | $208 | $420 | - |
| SanDisk Extreme II | $121 | $250 | $500 | - |
| Seagate SSD 600 | $105 | $170 | $380 | - |
The positive side is that pricing is extremely competitive. The M500 is already lowballing every other SSD in our comparison and the M550 comes in as a close second—and we expect street pricing to be lower than the MSRPs we've listed. The 840 EVO and Seagate SSD 600 are the only ones that beat the M550 in price but that's only at specific capacities (512GB) and with the current large sales that are going on. If Crucial is able to keep the pricing as competitive as our comparison suggests, other OEMs will definitely have a hard time competing with the M500 and M550.
All in all, I'm not sure how I should feel about the M550. On the one hand it feels a bit redundant to release a "high performance" drive that in reality is only average, but on the other hand, does it really matter if the price is right? I think not, but my concern is whether the M550 is fast enough to justify the added cost over the M500.
If you're a light user and price is the key purchase factor, then the M500 suffices and saves you money. However, if you're a power user and want performance, then it's better to look for the SanDisk Extreme II or Seagate SSD 600, or grab the Samsung 840 EVO 500GB on sale. The M550 kind of falls in between the two user groups and I'm not sure if there's any significant market there. For people who are not entirely sure whether the M500 is fast enough for their needs, the M550 is certainly a good and safe choice but I would have liked to see something competitive with the SanDisk Extreme II instead, even if the result was higher cost. It's not fast enough to close the gap, so the result ends up being a rehash of what we've already seen.
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tech6 - Tuesday, March 18, 2014 - link
I don't think that the M550 is so much a "performance" variant as it is a direct replacement for the 500. Most likely what is happening here is that the benchmark for value SSDs has just been lifted slightly. Once the M500 disappears the 550 will assume its price point.Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, March 18, 2014 - link
The thing is, the M550 doesn't replace the M500. The M500 will continue to be available and the M550 is simply Crucial's "high-end" offering.ZeDestructor - Tuesday, March 18, 2014 - link
Interesting... Much like tech6, I was expecting the M500 to die off peacefully... Any details from micron on why they're doing that?For now, I should go and buy an M500 480GB already... They're really cheap...
Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, March 18, 2014 - link
There are still some cost savings from the 128Gbit NAND at the smaller capacities and it's possible that the controller/DRAM configurations are slightly cheaper as well. Could be that Crucial/Micron is also using slightly lower quality NAND for the M500 since the extra space reserved for RAIN makes sure that is not an issue.hojnikb - Tuesday, March 18, 2014 - link
Its interesting, that they are not using more dies per package (as opposed to samsung with evos).I'm guessing using less packages and possibly smaller pcb could yield additional cost savings for crucial/micron... Or is this not the case...? Also they could go with dramless like toshiba is doing with their q series ?
V500 anyone ?
hojnikb - Tuesday, March 18, 2014 - link
So basicly m500 is crucials/microns "low" end offering now.Just like the crappy v4 (that drive is really slow and im ashamed to own one) that was in the m4 days.
tim851 - Tuesday, March 18, 2014 - link
I hope so. I find the speed of SSDs to be sufficient for now and I'd like to see them work on pricing rather than performance.hojnikb - Tuesday, March 18, 2014 - link
Yeah i hope so too. I'm planning to buy 480GB/1TB version sometime this year to replace that sandforce joke i'm having now (intel's 330) and ditch HDDs alltogether.StevoLincolnite - Wednesday, March 19, 2014 - link
I'm running a several year old OCZ Vertex 2 64Gb SSD... Been solid.One thing I have never said however was: "Gee this SSD is slow!". - Mostly the main advantage SSD's brought to the arena was the stupidly low latencies compared to mechanical drives.
Price needs to still come down, capacities need to keep increasing in the low-end and mid-range segments.
Literally the single *biggest* upgrade that a majority of PC's could use is simply an SSD, regardless of it's transfer rates.
Even on ancient 6-7 year old Core 2 PC's...
trichome333 - Wednesday, March 19, 2014 - link
I agree mate. Just got a M500 240gb and I literally feel like a dunce for not moving earlier.