Crucial MX100 review

The MX100 is from Crucial’s budget SSD range, and when it comes to solid performance for a low price, it’s tough to beat. The MX100 is available in 256GB and 512GB capacities, with a low cost per gigabyte of around 35p.

The MX100 uses 16nm 126Gbit/s 2-bit MLC NAND flash sourced from Crucial’s parent company Micron. The smaller 16nm manufacturing process allows Crucial to pack more flash chips into a tighter area, lowering production costs and paving the way for even larger-capacity SSDs, which goes some way to explain how Crucial is able to price the MX100 so competitively. The MX100 uses a Marvell 88SS9189 controller with custom Micron firmware.

Although the MX100 isn’t available as part of an upgrade kit, with all the extras required to fit the SSD inside your PC or laptop, it does come with a couple of extras we wouldn’t expect for a budget model. There’s a spacer for fitting the 7.5mm-thick SSD in a laptop with a 9.5mm drive bay included, as well as a free downloadable copy of Acronis True Image HD 2014. The only critical missing feature, compared to the full retail version of Acronis TrueImage, is the ability to back up only those files that have changed since the last backup instead of all files, which would reduce the time it takes to do a backup. Even so, the included software is useful for copying files from your old hard disk to the MX100.

All Crucial’s MX100 SSDs are rated at 550MB/s read speeds, but write speed performance increases with each higher capacity; the 256GB drive is rated at 330MB/s and the 512GB model at 500MB/s.

We tested the two higher-capacity models and found both performed excellently for the price. The 256GB model had large file read speeds of 457MB/s and write speeds of 454.4MB/s. The faster 512GB model saw read speeds of 467.5MB/s and write speeds of 679.3MB/s. In our small-file tests, the 256GB disk managed a read speed of 81.9MB/s and a write speed of 98.9MB/s. Running the 512GB model through the small-file tests made only a marginal difference to small-file performance.

The 512GB model is worth going for if your budget allows, not only thanks to its better capacity but also its better performance. It’s definitely the sweet spot in the MX100 range. Overall, the MX100 is astonishingly cheap for such a quick SSD, but just loses out to the Sandisk Ultra II for a Best Buy award, due to the Ultra II’s similar performance and lower cost per gigabyte. For all our current best Buy SSDs see our regularly updated Best SSD article.