Crucial MX300 750GB SSD Review

[Guest]

Micron's new 3D flash comes to market first in a limited edition MX300 750GB SSD. The new drive joins Samsung's 3D with TLC in the mainstream category.

Crucial MX300 750GB SSD Review : Read more

 

[FCsean]

Stick with the 850 Evo I guess

 

[bit_user]

I've always done well with Crucial. Price per GB is competitive, even if their performance was middle of the pack.

More importantly, the end-to-end error-correction offered in their MX100 and MX200 were key, for me. I don't even mind sacrificing a bit of performance, for it. I wonder if the MX300 has it?

 

[poppypl]

What was drive's firmware during tests? Was it M0CR011?

 

[mapesdhs]

Typo in the first page, "... enthusiasts should expect more options in the 2GB+ range." - I'm assuming that should be 2TB.

Pity about the performance, I had high hopes until I started seeing the results. OTOH, some do care more about capacity and price, so it may be that Samsung and others have to lower the prices anyway if Crucial can pinch some customers away.

One thing, does Crucial's modern SSD management tool allow one to do a secure erase without having to use a 3rd-party program or reboot the system? That wasn't the case with older models and was a big no thanks for me; always liked the way OCZ's tool could do a SE on the fly, and now Samsung's Magician can do that aswell (can't remember if SanDisk can).

I look forward to the death of 64GB/128GB models, they're holding things back. It'd be good if 256GB could die by the end of this year aswell, but I doubt that'll happen.

 

[uglyduckling81]

Most people wouldn't know or care about the difference between a Sammy Evo drive and this. All they will see is the capacity and the price. Make it cheaper and they will come.

 

[mdd1963]

Any new rigs would seem incomplete without an M.2/NVMe capability, and, specifically, ...a Samsung 950 Pro and it's 2000+ MB/sec! (The rest of the SATA old school SSDs can battle over 500 vs 510 vs 550 Mb/sec, etc..)

 

[CaedenV]

Any new rigs would seem incomplete without an M.2/NVMe capability, and, specifically, ...a Samsung 950 Pro and it's 2000+ MB/sec! (The rest of the SATA old school SSDs can battle over 500 vs 510 vs 550 Mb/sec, etc..)

Perhaps for you and I, but someone like my dad would love this kind of drive. Much more space than older SSDs, while still providing much faster performance than a traditional HDD, all while keeping the price down. There may be other SSDs on the market that provide a little cheaper $/GB, but I would bet that this drive will drop in price with time to reflect how it performs compared to others.

 

[Sakkura]

This SSD should either have been that bit cheaper to really compete with the planar TLC drives, or faster to move into the 850 Evo performance tier. I'm a bit disappointed that it doesn't have that kind of performance, but more disappointed still that it's not even priced properly for its performance level.

Price drops in retail can always fix that, admittedly, but there's really not much to get excited about here. I don't understand why Micron thought this was the way to introduce their shiny new 3D NAND.

 

[cknobman]

Not cheaper.
Slower.
Uses more power.
No improvement on endurance.

Am I missing anything major here?

I just dont see anything that is purchase worthy here.

 

[Lkaos]

Expect many improvements on the next Firmware release...

 

[3ogdy]

Slower and more expensive than the 850 EVO.
Well done, Crucial, Micron & Intel!

 

[GalanF]

The updated software is now available and enables Momentum Cache, a DRAM buffer algorithm that increases disk performance.

Are you going to redo some tests to see if this software improves performance? Thanks

 

[GalanF]

The updated software is now available and enables Momentum Cache, a DRAM buffer algorithm that increases disk performance.

Are you going to see if this updated software improves results? Thanks

 

[Sakkura]

The updated software is now available and enables Momentum Cache, a DRAM buffer algorithm that increases disk performance.

Are you going to redo some tests to see if this software improves performance? Thanks

I don't really see the point. DRAM caching has some issues, and benchmarking RAM performance for storage applications is a bit pointless.

 

[CRamseyer]

There are too many variables involved with testing DRAM cache software. We usually run a PCM8 Advanced test with it enabled to see what happens. We didn't have the data ready for this test and the charts were jam packed with other drives, too.

I wish I got the Notebook Battery Life test in. We recently moved to a new notebook and don't have many of the core SSDs tested yet. The MX300 delivers 360 minutes in the new Lenovo system. The time is right in the middle of the 30 or so drives we have tested so far.

Some of the sites measured base power and discussed how efficient the drive is. In a notebook, the MX300 is just average.

 

[sh4dow83]

Guess none of you guys ever had hard drives fail on you? Power loss protection matters. At least I don't want to take the risk.

 

[robertbloecker]

My graphics people for www.abprint.com currently have standard drives in there pc's - using Photoshop, Illustrator and In-design, any idea what the actual productivity gain is in real world situations? Does the average user see a 20% productivity gain? I know from benchmarks it's a huge gain, but what does that translate into with a person, sitting at a desk, doing actual work? Anyone know?

 

[CRamseyer]

It really depends on the workload. If you team waits for disk activity then an SSD upgrade would be worth the investment.

 

[kalmquist]

The MX300 is in fact cheaper than the 850 EVO. The MX300 is currently selling for $200, which comes to $0.267/GB. In contrast, Amazon.com prices the 1TB 850 EVO at $0.307/GB and the 500GB model at $0.310/GB. I'd still go with the EVO at this point because the EVO has better performance and a proven design.