Crucial P2 500GB NVMe m.2 SSD Review

Coming off its first consumer NVMe release in the QLC powered P1, Crucial is looking to better their lineup by offering two new products in the coming month. The first solution we will look at is the successor to the entry-level, the P2 SSD.

With the SM2263XT being a hot commodity in the entry-level NVMe market, Crucial has decided to go its own way by pairing in-house TLC NAND with a DRAMless Phison solution, the E13T.

We have seen this controller in past NVMe solutions like the SBXe from MyDigitalSSD, and when paired with HMB tech in Windows 10, it makes for a decent SATA replacement.

Marketing performance puts the P2 offering 2300 MB/s read and 940 MB/s write. Endurance ratings touch 150TBW for the 500GB capacity with support for Crucial Storage Executive and Momentum Cache.

The MSRP of the 500GB Crucial P2 comes in at $64.99 with a five-year warranty.

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As expected, the packaging is on point with the standard crucial colorway capacity listed at the bottom along with model identification.

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The back goes into more detail about the drive, including the warranty.

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Unboxing, the P2 is an m.2 2280 solution. A sticker on top covers most of the details, including the capacity of the drive and model info.

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The back of the drive has no additional solder points, solutions larger than 500GB will most likely increase NAND density to keep the low profile for ultrabooks, etc.

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Peeling the sticker, we have the Phison E13T at the bottom and four TLC NAND packages.

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Storage Executive from Crucial allows you to manage the P2 with firmware updates and a look into the drive's health. You can also enable momentum cache to aide the performance of the drive.

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CDM is a staple in performance testing; version 7 has seen some updates in the workloads used for testing. The sequential performance touched off quite well at 2300 MB/s read with write performance proving a bit tough at 475 MB/s. 4KQ1 is on par with high-end SATA solutions at 38 MB/s read and 185 MB/s write.

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ATTO is yet another popular benchmark for storage performance that breaks down performance based on file size. Read performance for the P2 isn't terrible; the drive is most consistent between 128K and 64M hovering between 2.4 GB/s and 2.8 GB/s.

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PCMark10 is not kind to the P2. It's the lowest scoring drive we have tested to date. Quick System Drive coming in at 930 with bandwidth of 116 MB/s.

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Switching gears to Full System Drive, it gets slightly worse with a score of 876 and bandwidth at 142.8 MB/s.

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Price/Performance for the P2 is surprisingly good. The drive beats out some high-cost 2263XT solutions like the CN600 and NM610 from Lexar, falling right behind the SBXe.

The P2 was built to take over entry-level or SATA replacement duties from the P1, and after testing, I can certainly say it does accomplish at least that. There is no question, build quality is on point; the pairing of the E13T and TLC NAND has proven quite good over the years. That said, we could have some odd firmware issues with Crucial using its own custom revision instead of the factory Phison solution.

Performance is fantastic if you are after sequential read numbers. At 50% fill, the drive still reaches 2300 MB/s at QD8 and 1379 MB/s QD1. 4KQ1 is on par with high-end SATA SSDs at 38 MB/s, while write performance suffers quite a bit running 475 MB/s in sequential QD8 and 185 MB/s 4KQ1.

PCMark10 shows the P2 at the bottom of our charts in both Quick and Full System Drive testing, but Price/Performance does nod its hat to the P2 with a 94% rating, thanks to the excellent market price.

As mentioned, Crucial has positioned the P2 quite well at $64.99 for the 500GB model. Still, if we are talking bang for your buck, most of you will be better off looking at any number of the low-cost 2263XT solutions that will offer much better Q1 performance and that snappy feel we all want in Windows.

Tyler's Test System Specifications

• Motherboard: ASUS Crosshair VIII Formula X570 (buy from Amazon)
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 (buy from Amazon)
• RAM: Corsair Vengeance 16GB 2x8GB DDR4 3600 (buy from Amazon)
• Cooler: Corsair Hydro H60 (buy from Amazon)
• Case: Corsair Carbide 275R (buy from Amazon)
• OS Storage: Corsair MP600 1TB (buy from Amazon)
• Power Supply: Corsair RM850x (buy from Amazon)
• OS: Microsoft Windows 10 (buy from Amazon)