Crucial T500 1TB Review

Final Score : 92 out of 100

Thanks to a timely firmware update, as otherwise this review’s conclusion would be radically different, a certain phrase does spring to mind when thinking about the T500 series. That phrase is “A Victim Of Their Own Success”. That is because in many ways Crucial are a victim of their own success. The B58R R.G. NAND is simply that fast, that reasonably priced (especially when you are the retail arm of the manufacture of said NAND), and that reliable. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your point of view, this success makes model diversification rather difficult. As we saw throughout testing, even by moving down to what is now this generation’s ‘budget’ controller of choice (and its mere four channels) buyers are still getting a heck of a lot of performance. So much so that there really is no way to go lower without risking the release of the next ‘MS Clippy’ / Digg 4.0 / that everyone knows is a bad idea.

This is not a good thing for Crucial. It is not even a Good Thing™ for buyers. What it is, is a Great Thing for many of the P5 Plus targeted demographic, but at the same time a Great Loss™ for other portions of said demographic. We say that as the T500 series is now the mainstream drive to beat. Sure. It is ‘only’ a PCIe 4.0 based drive. Sure. The T705 out and out blows it out of the water. Sure. It also costs noticeably more than the P5 Plus it was supposed to replace costs. None of that matters. This is a 1TB SSD you can plunk into basically any motherboard made in the past half decade and know it will give excellent performance. Maybe not PCIe 5.0 “enthusiast grade” levels of performance… but a lot of performance nonetheless.

On the other hand, it also costs noticeable more than the P5 Plus it replaces. The beloved (by many) P5 Plus came to be known not for its shear performance but for the fact it was inexpensive without ever being cheap. For many scenarios the added performance of the T500 is not going to be routinely noticed, but the upfront cost is going to be noticed by all. Noticed because you can basically grab a 1TB P5 Plus hoopty and 16GB of DDR4 (2x8GB) for what the T500 1TB demands.

Put another way, the T500 is SSD equivalent of an old-school “Pony Car” in an era of “Muscles Cars”… but for many builds all that is needed an econobox / sub-compact ‘city car’. Surveillance systems; HTPC builds; 99 percent of ultra-small form-factor (“NUC”) builds; or anywhere an inexpensive P5 Plus 1TB was ‘good enough’ the T500 brings new meaning to the word overkill. Such overkill it will actually be hard to justify its above 100 USD asking price for these budget builds.

We legitimately do not know how Crucial is going to be able to make a “T300” series (that is not a dumpster fire) and truly replace the P5 Plus. What we do know is the T500 is not it. It is just too good to ever be placed in the category as the P5 Plus… or at least not at this price point. Until such a time exists where the T500 1TB can be purchased for 10 cents a GB it will never fully replace the P5 Plus and Crucial may have made a mistake in EOL’ing the P5.

On the positive side, the T500 is an incredible value for mainstream buyers. It does make a great secondary drive. It even makes for a great value option for those looking for a D / Steam / Game / Download / Video Storage Drive. Forget setting the bar higher, it literally rewrites the meaning of what a 4-channel controller can do in our minds. It does all that and yet only costs 12-13 cents a GB. That is the very epitome of the phrase ‘great value’. One that will remake the mainstream market and force many a manufacture to EOL now overpriced ‘budget’ options and replace them with even better models.

Thus, when all the arguments for and against the T500 are taken into account we think that Crucial does indeed have the makings of another cult classic on their hands. It certainly will not replace the P5 Plus, but maybe that is a good thing. Maybe it is time that even budget builds get some (relatively) high performance love. So if you are looking for a rather peppy drive that (now) pretty much defines the phrase ‘It Just Works’, the T500 series is the one you want to be looking at.