INTRODUCTION

   M.2 SATA SSDs (solid state drives) may have switched gears in terms of performance ever since the introduction of the very first NVMe (non-volatile memory express) models last year (thus their popularity skyrocketed) but due to their compatibility with older desktop systems and laptops 2.5" SATA III based models still enjoy the top spot when it comes to sales (and it may take a while for that to change). This of course means that there will be no shortage of new 2.5" SATA III solid state drives getting introduced in the market (at least not any time soon) and although it's been quite a while since the SATA III interface was maxed out in terms of performance we can also expect them to feature the same NAND controllers and flash used with most of the latest M.2 models. Crucial introduced their top of the line MX500 line of SSDs not long ago and just like with their previous models the entry level BX500 line was next.

   Crucial.com is a leading online retailer specializing in computer memory (RAM) and solid state drives (SSD), and is operated by a subsidiary of Micron Technology, Inc., one of the world's leading manufacturers of computer memory products. Crucial.com offers more than 250,000 compatible products for nearly every computer system: home and business, old and new, PC and Mac® computers. Utilizing a suite of easy-to-use, free online tools, including the Crucial® System Scanner and the Crucial Memory Advisor™ tool, crucial.com makes it easy to find a compatible upgrade to improve computer performance and restore system reliability.

   As competition in the lower-tiers of the SSD industry is getting fiercer every day Crucial had to find ways to drop the cost of their upcoming BX500 line (currently available in 120/240/480GB capacities) and so the very first thing they did was to "marry" the SM2258XT quad-channel NAND flash controller by Silicon Motion with their very own 64-layer 3D TLC NAND flash (Crucial/Micron) and skip on using one or more DRAM modules. As you may have noticed the SM2258XT NAND flash controller by Silicon Motion is pretty much identical to that used in the MX500/BX300 series with one basic difference, it's what the industry calls a DRAM-less design which stands for a cost-effective solution with inferior performance. Of course you're still getting features like NANDXtend (error-correcting with data protection), S.M.A.R.T, TRIM, NCQ, thermal-throttling, active garbage collection, DevSleep (device sleep) and SLC write acceleration (algorithms for optimal sustained performance). Finally Crucial covers the BX500 line with a limited three year warranty and reports a write endurance of 40TBW for the 120GB model, 80TBW for the 240GB model and 120TBW for the 480GB model with an MTBF of 1.5 million hours.