While the old saying is true that aged wisdom can indeed beat exuberant youth, that is rarely the case in the mainstream corner of the SSD M.2 marketplace. Here, competition is fierce, and letting one’s offerings fall behind the competition is a death sentence. These days, it is the rare drive that lasts longer than a year before being replaced… and yet Crucial’s circa 2023 T500 series still reigns as one of the best value options going in the mainstream market! However, even Crucial has been forced to admit that it was time for a refresh as the T500’s PCIe 4.0 x4 interface was starting to show its age. Thus, they recently released the PCIe 5.0 x4 based… P510 series.
If reading that makes you do a double-take and reread it again, don’t worry. It should cause a Stack overflow in any experienced builder. After all, the P series has been known for many years now as Crucial’s value-oriented series. Replete with models where performance is always counterbalanced by price. Conversely, the newer T-series is all about premium performance and is tailor-made for those with a need for speed. Well. Those two rules of thumb get thrown out the nearest window with the release of the P510 series. This new P-branded model is arguably the short-term successor to the T500 series…and will be until a proper “T510” is unleashed upon the marketplace.
We say this as the Phison ‘E31T’, the P510 makes use of is arguably more powerful and potent than the E25 used in the T500. Yes. Both are 4-channel controllers. Yes. Both prioritize lower power consumption over performance. Yes, the T500 E25 comes with an onboard RAM cache while the E31T does not and instead is “HMB Enabled”… aka ‘DRAM-Less’. However, the Phison E25 and its 2400MT/s per channel performance limitation appear antiquated in comparison to the E31T’s 3600MT/s per channel capabilities. When the PCIe 5.0 x4 versus PCIe 4.0 x4 abilities of the E31T are then added into the equation, the P510 promises to offer levels of performance the aging T500 cannot hope to match. Equally important, the P510 promises to offer said performance while also running noticeably cooler than previous Phison PCIe 5.0 controllers. A promise sure to grab even Joe and Jane sixpacks attention.
Also like the T500, the P510 is a single-sided design with only room for 2 NAND ICs and the controller on its ~22x80mm PCB. Thankfully, just as the T500 made use of the best TLC NAND that Micron had to offer (at the time of its release) Crucial has once again bestowed upon the P510 Micron’s latest and greatest NAND. Dubbed the ‘G9’ (for it is ninth generation Micron NAND but not 9th gen Replacement Gate NAND… as it is ‘just’ gen 4 RG CuA NAND), these new NAND IC’s offer speeds of up to 3600MT/s. Which, compared to the ‘mere’ 2400MT/s NAND used in both the T500 and T705 models, should indeed be eyebrow-raising. Typically, Crucial likes to showcase its cutting-edge NAND in a ‘high performance’ (aka Flagship/halo) model. Yet, here we are with a… “mainstream” P-class model as the first to use it. Not a T-series.
To further cement the fact that this is a drive more in line with T-series values is the fact that it comes with a mainstream asking price of about 10 cents per GB (or about 200 USD for the 2TB reviewed here today). Which in today’s market is high for the ‘value’ end of the spectrum and yet decent by the mainstream, and especially upper-mainstream, markets.
Thus, when experienced buyers add one and one to another one… and get three a few concerns do spring to mind. Namely, why did Crucial release another P-branded drive before refreshing their T? Does this mean that the new G9 is a less-than-optimal successor to the venerable B58R NAND? Conversely, is Crucial just (albeit ham-handedly) ripping the band-aid off and trying to rebrand both the T and P at the same time… with the P standing for “Performance” and T meaning “Top of the Line”? Lastly, is Crucial toying with the idea of not having a T500 series going forward and rather will only have three models in their 2025 lineup: a T7, a P5… and a P3? Those… those are the kind of questions manufacturers typically go out of their way to avoid creating in the minds of their potential customers. Yet here we are with Crucial having to answer more questions on a single model than any other Crucial model in recent memory. So, without further preamble, let us see if the P510 is indeed up to this Herculean Task of properly showing off Micron’s next generation NAND… or not, and it is more a case of it being relegated to a Sisyphean one. One is doomed to obscurity as buyers quickly forget about it and move on to the eventual T710 series and possibly even T510.
