Crucial MX200 (250GB, 500GB & 1TB) SSD Review
by Kristian Vättö on May 22, 2015 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
- SSDs
- Crucial
- MX200
- Micron 16nm
Random Read Performance
For full details of how we conduct our Iometer tests, please refer to this article.
Random read performance is typical to Crucial's Marvell based drives a bit better than the BX100.
The power consumption is fairly average too, resulting in good efficiency.
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Looking at the scaling with queue depth, the performance increases smoothly across all queue depths and capacities. It's not 850 Pro level, but I suspect the NAND has its play in this too.
Random Write Performance
Random write performance, on the other hand, is top of the class and similar to the MX100. Crucial's Marvell based SSDs have always had excellent peak random write performance and the MX200 finally adopts the performance to steady-state too.
Despite the high performance, the power efficiency is good. The SLC cache in the 250GB model shows it's advantage because the performance is nearly the same, whereas power consumption is considerably lower. Writing to SLC NAND is more power efficient because each write operation requires less programming pulses to set the correct voltage state, although the downside is that the MX200 will basically rewrite all data to MLC later, which will defeat any power savings as we saw in our Storage Bench traces.
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Especially QD1 and QD2 performance is great and the throughput also scales well with queue depth. The 250GB model hits the wall of its SLC cache in QD4 (half of the drive is now filled with data i.e. the whole SLC cache), so the performance takes a slight hit while the drive moves existing data from SLC to MLC and processes new write requests from the host.
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busky2k - Friday, May 22, 2015 - link
Thanks for the honest review. Its a shame the MX200 doesn't excel like its brethren.romrunning - Friday, May 22, 2015 - link
Agreed. That's why I appreciate seeing independent tests of manufacturers' claims. Crucial/Micron just showed me why I'll still buy Samsung over their drives. It's a shame; I used to recommend the MX100 as the best value drive. Now it's the 850 EVO all the way for value drives.sabot00 - Friday, May 22, 2015 - link
I feel the BX100 at the very least deserves consideration. The 850 Evo is not a blanket recommendation, especially for laptops where power consumption is important. The BX100 is probably the best mix of price / performance / power right now.Stoatie - Friday, February 12, 2016 - link
Then what you really want to look at is energy use for a given IO task. Consider the 512GB EVO and BX:EVO: ~350MB/s @ 1.6W. = 218.75 MB/J =
BX100: 300MB/s @ 1.4W = 200 MB/J
For a given task the EVO will finish faster and do it with less total energy use.
leexgx - Tuesday, May 24, 2016 - link
but overall BX100 uses less power (i norm aim to buy BX100 for laptops unless SED drive is required then its norm intel 1000 or 2000 drive)Samus - Friday, May 22, 2015 - link
Considering the price of the M500's (960GB model <$300) I still use those almost exclusively unless the MX\BX100's happen to be cheaper. Been very happy with Crucial drives since the C300, very few issues and decent performance for the price. Support is now excellent with their "storage executive" software making firmware updates relatively painless.emn13 - Friday, May 22, 2015 - link
Given the fact that most workloads won't cause noticable differences between high end and low end drives, the price, and the power loss protection mean that the ancient m500 is probably a better choice both featurewise and pricewise than its newer, faster competitors for most PCs.leexgx - Saturday, May 23, 2015 - link
Don't like the idea of DWA drives twice the amount of writes and silly more power draw (the bx100 is a good way on power just lacks FDE witch is unfortunate) mx200 is not on my list of drives to getedlee - Friday, May 22, 2015 - link
i am not sure why crucial stopped producing m550, it performs better than mx100 and mx200 series, and was true successor to the legendary m4 driveDanNeely - Friday, May 22, 2015 - link
Are the flash chips and controller it uses still available? If either has been discontinued they wouldn't have a choice. Even if the flash was available, but just significantly more expensive; keeping a competitive price would likely force their hand.