Final Score: 88 out of 100
Before we begin let’s make one thing clear. We not only like the Crucial MX500 4TB and will be buying it for our own personal rigs… we can in good faith recommend it. Its combination of decent to good performance is more than good enough for typical SATA scenarios. Its price is extremely reasonable and when you combine the two and then add in extremely durable NAND the result is a good value drive. Just one that has been improperly branded. That is the Coles Notes summary and for most that too will be ‘good enough’ to help them come to a decision.
With that said the Crucial MX500 4TB should not be labeled a MX500 anything. It shares little beyond the color scheme and chassis of its previous MX500 ‘brethren’. Even the silently(ish) refreshed MX500 1TB is not close enough to be considered a smaller version of the MX500 4TB. Instead, the 4TB is an entirely new beast and one must consider it a “gen 1.5” outlier. An outlier where all its quirks and abilities are unique to it and only it. So, under no circumstances can you use the 4TB capacity option as a judge of the smaller versions – or vice versa.
We understand why Crucial did what they did (they wanted to get an actually good value 4TB’er out into the wilds ASAP) but they should have released a 2TB capacity variant first… and given it a MX600 model name. Then released this variant at a later date. This did not happen, and the end result is sure to cause needless consumer confusion (e.g. “what do you mean it is not the same as the other MX500 models?!”) and maybe even anger (e.g. “all silent upgrades should be avoided”).
This is the problem with silent upgrades. Yes, you can sometimes swap out a single component for a newer one and few will really care. For example, SM2258 vs SM2259 controller differences are basically just minor tweaks to allow it to handle newer NAND (and make it cheaper to manufacture). Thus, no one really cared when the MX500 1TB suddenly started using it. However, when you stack a silent upgrade on top of a silent upgrade things go sideways quick… and you end up with an entirely new drive. That is what has happened here and make no mistake, it may say MX500 on it but it is a different drive. One where it will not have the same random and/or small file performance of the smaller capacity MX500 drives. One which will come with noticeably less onboard RAM than other MX500s (and thus be less capable of handling deeper IO queue depths). One where it will even ‘age’ differently than its predecessors and most likely last longer than other MX500 variants.
Yes, this changing of NAND on top of a previous controller change is both a good and bad thing. However, it is not all that bad nor that grim when you start digging deep into the positives and negatives. For example, while it is indeed true that the overall performance is lesser than what smaller capacity MX500s can do… that is to be expected. Mega-capacity SSDs always have lowered performance compared to ‘sweet spot’ capacity variants… but in return you get noticeably more capacity. More importantly, with the MX500 4TB, the performance differences for typical home users are small enough to be easily overlooked. Maybe even not noticed all that often by some. This all thanks to NAND that was designed with PCIe 5.0 controllers in mind. Put bluntly, this NAND is so fast that even with the inherent performance penalties that go along with doubling the native capabilities of a controller the MX500 4TB is rather close to what older (and smaller capacity) MX500s can do.
That is how good this new Micron NAND is.
As such, if you can ignore its branding the MX500 4TB is actually a pretty decent mega-capacity SATA solid-state drive. A drive tailor made for those who need both a ton of ‘better than Hard Drive’ performance and need it to also not break their budget. So upon hearing that Crucial double-stacked silent upgrades we urge you to overlook Crucial’s major marketing missteps. Instead, take a close look at what it can do without the needless baggage of multiple silent upgrades mudding the waters. Do that and you may just find your next ‘D’ drive.
The Review
Crucial MX500 4TB
As long as you can get past the absolutely poor decisions made by Crucial, the 4000GB capacity variant of the venerable MX500 series is indeed a good choice. Poor name, poor RAM capacity, poor controller or not. The end results do speak for themselves. So while it is more controversial than we like, we doubt many can argue with the overall value this drive brings to the tabl
