HP P500 1TB Portable SSD Review

Shortly after our review of the HP P700 went live, we were back in contact with HP talking about its next release, the updated P500 Portable SSD. HP aims this solution at the entry-level, users that want a simple backup solution that, while isn't going to be the quickest on the market, will still be significantly faster than a portable hard drive.

The P500 in the 1TB capacity has a bit of mystery around it currently as its only available in a few countries, namely India. That said, HP does say it will be available in the states Q3 of this year.

Marketing performance has this drive offering 420 MB/s read and 270 MB/s write available in both 500GB and 1TB capacities. Connectivity is pushed over a USB 3.2 Gen 2 interface with compatibility with Windows, macOS, and Linux platforms.

We currently have no MSRP set for the 1TB P500 from HP, but judging from Amazon India, we should be looking at 14500 INR or roughly $190 USD. The warranty is listed for three years.

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The packaging isn't quite as nice as the P700, but we still have HP branding and capacity along the bottom with features listed.

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Unboxing, we find the P500 in a rather sleek chassis. Included, we have a legacy Type-A cable with an adapter for USB-C.

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The drive itself offers a USB-C connection.

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Opening the chassis, we find a Silicon Motion SM3350 controller paired with Samsung NAND. It does appear this is a custom design with room for higher capacity models.

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Above, we get a closer look at the controller and NAND.

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CDM is a staple in performance testing; version 7 has seen some updates in the workloads used for testing. Sequential performance tops out at 376 MB/s read and 276 MB/s write.

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ATTO is yet another popular benchmark for storage performance that breaks down performance based on file size. Here we see a peak of 336 MB/s read and 256 MB/s write starting at 128K.

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New to our testing is a 200GB data transfer that aims to weed out drives that lose performance during backup scenarios. In this scenario, the P500 had an average sustained transfer speed of 230 MB/s.

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With no current MSRP set, we were going off the India price for our Price/Performance data. That said, the HP P500 at this time is the worst drive in our charts at 51%.

The HP P500 is an interesting drive. The build quality seems quite good with a solid enclosure and excellent fit and finish. Hardware, on the other hand, we are unsure of. The SM3350, after a bit of research, seems to be a controller used for UHS-I memory cards, and despite the fact HP is saying this drive supports USB 3.2 Gen 2, the hardware itself does not.

Falling into the performance, this drive certainly isn't the quickest but does excel with sustained writes. In fact, the 275 MB/s write we were able to get in CDM only dropped by 40 MB/s in our sustained 200GB file transfer.

As you all know, price is a huge concern with the P500. Using the INR as a template, the current price sits somewhere around $190 for 1TB. Going off that, HP needs to get the drive down to $80 to hit the middle of our chart at its current level of performance, or $50 to be somewhere just under the value the P700 currently has.

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)