The New King of Gen4 SSDs - Crucial T500 Review

Update - 31/10 10:30 (CET): We're currently looking into a potential firmware issue with the T500. Apparently, some others had reported issues with post-SLC performance, mentioning speeds can drop to 300MB/s in sustained writes. Our (two) drives didn't show any issues in the last few weeks we've had them, and part of testing is copying two sets of 500GB to the SSD, which it handled perfectly, three runs in a row. Similarly, PC Mark 10 Consistency pushes close to 30TB through the drive, and it did all those runs perfectly as well. SSDs with poor base level (once pushed through dram/slc cache) performance always show issues there. Update 12/12: First off, sorry it took a while to update on this. We've been extremely busy the last few weeks for various reasons. Crucial has been pushing to discuss the firmware topic since day 1, it's not because of them this took a while. Anyway, we've spoken with them since and talked about what we're seeing and what other reviewers are reporting, and they've been very open in talking about why some of these things are happening. The short version of it is that Crucial decided to push for as much SLC caching and as much "real world" performance as possible, at the cost of worse sustained performance when you dorun out of SLC space. But this really only happens if you don't give the drive a chance to clean up (SLC -> TLC) at all, so you basically have to write 1/3rd of the capacity without any interruptions for you to see that drop. So even when copying two sets of 500GB, with a little break in between, we didn't see that in early testing, and neither did we see that with PC Mark 10 Consistency which does push ~27 TB through the drive (and runs various tests with the drive nearly full), since it has some interruptions which allowed the T500 to clean up. I'm happy we got this cleared up, and they did say they are looking into a possible firmware update in the future to improve post-SLC performance if possible, but if you ask me I really don't think the current situation changes anything for most of you, nor is it even a bad design choice for the majority of SSD buyers who end up with a larger SLC buffer with the T500 than with most other drives. If you really need an SSD just for constant file transfers of 100s of Gigabytes, maybe consider something else, but for everyone else, I stand by my opinion that the T500 is one of the top tier SSDs to consider, especially now that prices in most regions already seems very competitive. Let me know if you have any questions!

In the last 3 years I've needed 6 or 7 SSD's for various builds. Nada has steered me in the right direction every time. No need to look anywhere else for NVME info. Nada is the queen

Thank you for the consistent, well put together videos.

Great review, the information is so clear I don't know a lot about computers but I learn what I need for the new main SSD that I'm looking for. Also I really liked that you explain what the different bench marks are for instead of just throwing graphics and numbers like other channels do And your audio, voice and tone make it so easy to follow because english is not my main language

How come you only have 266K subs???!!! One of the best channels for PC hardware reviews. Thank you so much.

Thank you! Had some questions about what drive to go with in a SFF build in the FORMDT1 and you answered all of them.

I look forward to your reviews as much as I enjoy watching them. Excellent work Nada!

TCG Opal 2.0 encryption appears to be supported as per LinkedIn post by crucial/micron. Another really good review for us, awaiting the launch of T500 at decent pricing in India

Thank you. Very comprehensive video, everything I needed to know. 😊

nice! ordered. retiring the p5 plus

Thanks for your review. I bought this to replace an HP FX900 Pro that is on my HP EliteBook 840 G5 due to firmware issues, lack of support, and having 3F0 error.

This is certainly a drive I will be keeping my eye on. Thank you very much for the review, and those speeds and temps are impressive. This would make a nice, fast, boot drive to replace my 512Gb Micron that is still in my system.

My current pc is about 7 liters and has 2 NVME drives on the motherboard. And a 2Tb SATA drive. The M.2 drives are also 2 Tb but are gen 3 drives. Haven't been tempted to replace those until this review. I think I will definitely be looking at a couple of these early next year. The 4TB versions will be tempting if the price is good. Time to start saving my nickels! Thanks for the excellent review!

Great to see more high end Gen 4 drives for uses that Gen 5 isn't needed/ possible on the platfrom.

thank you for your comprehensive NVMe SSD reviews and comparisons, tech mum

Great review, impressive product. I also thought Gen 4 was at its limit but this is a notable improvement. I completely agree with your conclusion that this should be top recommend SSD for nearly everyone assuming pricing will be competitive. That being said, I am a little sad my SN850X lost the Gen 4 gaming crown.

Very happy with the 1tb when they where on a super sale wish I bought two !!

Best SSD review channel, thanks !

Best review of SSD. You gained a subscriber 👍

Thanks for the review.