Crucial P5 SSD review: Excellent bang for the buck

Having reviewed both Crucial’s P1 and P2 bargin NVMe SSD’s, I expected more of the same middling performance from the new P5. I was wrong: The P5 was strictly upper-crust with normal workloads, and actually took home first prize in one test. It’s not the drive you want for extremely long writes, but otherwise—it hauls the freight. 

This review is part of our ongoing roundup of the best SSDs. Go there for information on competing products and how we tested them.

Design and Specs

The P5 is available in four capacities: 250GB ($63 on AmazonRemove non-product link), 500GB ($87 on AmazonRemove non-product link), the 1TB we tested ($180 on Amazon), and 2TB ($400 on AmazonRemove non-product link). Those prices are pretty much on track for a mid-range NVMe SSD. Note that the 250GB version is rated for half the write speed of the larger versions. This is common across the industry in that capacity. A single NAND chip, instead of the two or more with larger capacities, doesn’t have as many data lines.

To read this article in full, please click here