As we have made mention in the past Crucial is on a rampage lately. First, they completely overhaul their entire lineup and create not only what was easily, for its day, one of the best M.2 2280s going but also create an entirely new class of Crucial drives. We are of course referring to the T700 Pro. Which combined best in class NAND with arguably the best controller available. Since then Crucial has re-defined the mainstream market – twice – with their T500 series; released an excellent (albeit less than perfect) 22×30 M.2 series (the P310), and generally speaking be “keeping up the skeer” with aggressive price reductions on all their models. In that vein the T705 series is now down to a mere 15 cents per Gigabyte MSRP… or to put it another way the non-heatsink, 2TB capacity variant we will be reviewing today now only costs a mere single Benjamin than what the 1TB demanded on launch day – $300 USD vs launch day ~200USD (1TB).
If that does not grab your attention, then maybe the idea of obtaining 14.5GBps read with 12.7GBps of sequential write goodness instead of just 13.6/10.2GBps will. Maybe a mere extra $100 in return for a whopping (by consumer standards) 1.8 Million I/O per second sounds like Nirvana. Maybe it will be the endurance increase from decent 600TB to a good 1200TB that will do it. Whatever the reason, and thanks to Crucial, we will be able to now show you precisely what the 1TB vs 2TB differences in the T705 series actually mean. Actually mean in both a theoretical / synthetic benchmark and practical real-world points of view.
So no matter what the reason for why you are comparing and contrasts the merits of stepping up to the ‘sweet spot’ capacity over the… “easier on the pocketbook” option we intend to give you as clear a picture as possible. After all, just because the rule of thumb says that 2TB is the sweet spot, does not necessarily mean it is your sweet spot. Maybe there is not enough of a performance difference to justify the added cost and the 1TB is the better fit. In this vein, Crucial really can be considered a victim of their own success as the 1TB T705 Pro is one heck of a bargain at a mere $160. Mix in the fact that the T500 Pro showed only moderate differences and it certainly is going to be an interesting ride. So buckle up, and let’s put one of the fastest going PCIe 5 M.2 2280 models to the test!
