Once again Crucial has proven that they are the trailblazers of the Solid-State Drive industry. In one fell swoop, that is sure to send shockwaves across the entire SSD marketplace, they have created what is easily the best value solid-state drive available today. Up until now there were two distinct classes of SSDs. There were SATA drives meant for budget conscious buyers who simply could not afford NVMe based models, and then there were high performance NVMe drives that offer such a huge boost in performance that they make SATA SSDs seem ‘hard drive slow’. That all changes with the P1 as it costs only about 7 cents per GB more than the typical mainstream SATA model but is NVMe fast. That is an insanely good deal.
Make no mistake, there are better/faster/more powerful NVMe drives. The use of 4-bit QLC NAND is going to be controversial. So if shear performance is the only metric you care about, the Crucial P1 is not right for you. Then again nothing less than 3DXPoint or MLC NAND models will be. Expect to pay a price premium for the privilege though.
Yes the Intel Optane 905P’s of the marketplace are going to be faster, but they are not remotely close to being four times as fast – and that is what the difference in price per Gigabyte boils down to: one 480GB Intel 905P drive or two Crucial P1 1TB drives. The P1 1TB’s price is simply too low and its average real-world performance is too high for anything else to even come close to matching its value. This is the secret to the P1’s almost inevitable success: near SATA SSD asking price but at (nearly) NVMe performance. This drive’s value is so peerless that the only model that comes remotely close is the Samsung 970 Evo. Even then a similarly sized 970 Evo will set buyers back noticeably more money, and yet offer very little more performance than what the P1 offers. In some cases the extra money will net you less performance all thanks to that mega-sized pSLC buffer the Crucial P1 comes with.
To drill down a bit deeper, both the P1 and 970 Evo make use of relatively fragile, slow NAND (QLC and TLC respectively). Both rely on a pseudo-SLC buffer to boost performance into the stratosphere. Both when pushed beyond the capabilities of their SLC-buffer’s capacity offer as little as 100MB/s performance until the buffer is emptied. Both even rely upon this write buffer to extend the lifespan of the NAND. Yes theoretically 3-bit TLC will be more durable than 4-bit QLC… but in reality few will ever exhaust the P1 1TB’s write buffer… as it is massive compared the pSLC the Sammy 9-series come with.
More to the point, the average home user does approximately 10GB of writes to their OS drive a day. Enthusiasts will do 10-30GB a day. The Crucial P1 1TB comes with a write buffer that varies from over 130GB to 12GB. So unless you are the type of does massive file transfers routinely and like to keep your drive filled up to max capacity… the type of NAND is really not all that important. For those that do…. both are less than optimal than MLC NAND based models, and especially worse than Intel’s 3DXPoint / ‘Optane memory’ based models. This is why for the average buyer concerns over TLC vs QLC are not that critical, and why a lot of people will be opting for the P1 over the 970 Evo series. Its value is so good its bordering on ‘no-brainer’ territory.
While it will not be an optimal choice for enthusiasts or those who can’t keep the drives temperatures in check, the P1 does break down the cost of entry barriers and allows previously SATA only buyers the luxury of stepping up to ‘real’ Solid-State Drive performance levels. That is impressive to say the least. As long as you understand the limitations of the QLC NAND and work within its clearly defined operating parameters, it really will open your eyes to what NVMe can offer and provide you with years of blazingly fast performance. Congratulations Crucial for creating a true value NVMe series. A series that conclusively proves that QLC is probably going to be the future of the value and mainstream marketplaces.
The Review
Crucial P1 1TB Review
The Crucial P1 1TB is going to be a bit controversial and we can foresee owners falling into two broad camps: those who find its value all but unbeatable, and those who find it highly disappointing. The secret to turning all the P1 1TB’s potential performance into actual performance is cooling. Cooling is the weak-link of QLC NAND drives and you will have to be more aggressive than with the typical M.2 drive. However, as long as you can properly cool it this drive is the drive to own if you are on a tight budget but crave performance that can only come from NVMe SSDs.
