CONCLUSION

   Although we haven’t had the chance to test the M500DC by Micron the M510DC proved to be a worthy opponent against both enterprise grade and consumer oriented SSDs (at least the ones in our charts) and on top of that it’s the fastest model in our 12 hour IOMeter SNIA chart. Unfortunately the drive doesn’t do extremely well in terms of read performance but it makes sense for Micron to have focused more in durability for an enterprise grade model and here the M510DC shines since with a DWPD of 2 it’s over 5 times as durable as many of its opponents in the market currently (some may argue that this doesn’t change much since even a DWPD of 0.3 or 1 is adequate but it’s never bad to be better). Another good feature is the addition of TCG-E (our model didn’t feature it) and although it may take a while before this technology is used on a massive scale still its benefits are undeniably many especially for mission critical applications.

   By now most consumers are aware that the durability and extra features of enterprise grade products also reflect on their price and since the M510DC 480GB is one such product it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that it currently retails for USD322.37 inside the USA (Amazon.com) and for 374Euros inside the EU (Amazon.de) a price tag which is actually not bad for such a product. In the end the M510DC is not the best performing enterprise grade SSD line in the market currently but it does combine very good performance with excellent durability numbers, relatively good price tag and a 5 year warranty and thus it’s well worth our Platinum Award.

PROS

- Build Quality (2 Million Hours MTBF)
- Endurance / Durability (2 DWPD)
- Very Good All Around Performance
- Top In Our 12 Hour IOMeter SNIA Test
- Power Loss Protection (13 Tantalum Capacitors)
- TCG-E Support
- 5 Year Warranty
- Available In 960GB

CONS

- Overall Performance Could Be Better
- Price (For Some)