Tuesday, January 6th 2015
Crucial Introduces Next Generation Solid State Drives
Crucial, a leading global brand of memory and storage upgrades, today announced two new solid state drives (SSDs): the Crucial MX200, built to deliver leading speeds and features, and the Crucial BX100, designed to offer substantial yet affordable performance gains compared to a hard drive.
Crucial MX200 SSD: Available in 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB capacities with respective MSRPs of £107.99, £191.99, and £360.99, the new Crucial MX200 delivers sequential reads and write up to 555MB/s and 500MB/s, along with random reads and writes up to 100k and 87k IOPS on all file types. Additionally, with an endurance rating up to 320 TBW (total bytes written) on the 1TB model, the Crucial MX200 delivers up to five times more endurance than a typical client SSD.
The Crucial MX200 is also the only consumer drive on the market with Dynamic Write Acceleration, a new and unique technology that enables faster saves and file transfers. Furthermore, the MX200 also offers a host of industry-leading features, including:
Crucial BX100 SSD
Available in 120GB, 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB capacities with respective MSRPs of £53.99, £84.99, £153.99, and £306.99, the Crucial BX100 delivers sequential reads and writes up to 535MB/s and 450MB/s on all file types. More than fifteen times faster than a hard drive, the Crucial BX100 allows users to boot up almost instantly, load programs in seconds, and accelerate demanding applications. And with Extreme Energy Efficiency technology, the BX100 is two times more energy efficient than a typical hard drive, allowing users to run their systems longer, using less power.
The BX100 is the first Crucial drive to include the Silicon Motion SM2246EN controller. Robert Fan, vice president and general manager of Silicon Motion U.S.A., said, "We are excited to be partnering with Crucial on the new BX100 SSD. Our high-performance and low power consumption SM2246EN controller combined with leading-edge Micron NAND helps make the BX100 fast, energy efficient, and affordable."
"We designed the MX200 and BX100 to meet the varied needs of the market, making it easier for anyone to move to an SSD, whether they are a seasoned computer enthusiast or an absolute beginner, all while keeping value top of mind," said Jonathan Weech, senior worldwide product manager, Crucial. "These drives leverage Micron's years of heritage in storage technology to deliver advanced features and performance, resulting in an unparalleled SSD experience for our consumers."
Availability
Both Crucial MX200 and BX100 2.5-inch drives will be available in Q1 2015 at Crucial.com and through select global partners. The Crucial MX200 will also be available in mSATA and M.2 form factors during Q1 2015.
Crucial MX200 SSD: Available in 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB capacities with respective MSRPs of £107.99, £191.99, and £360.99, the new Crucial MX200 delivers sequential reads and write up to 555MB/s and 500MB/s, along with random reads and writes up to 100k and 87k IOPS on all file types. Additionally, with an endurance rating up to 320 TBW (total bytes written) on the 1TB model, the Crucial MX200 delivers up to five times more endurance than a typical client SSD.
- Best-in-class AES 256-bit encryption to protect data at the highest possible level
- Exclusive Data Defense to guard against corrupt files
- Adaptive Thermal Protection to keep systems cool
- Power Loss Protection to preserve user data if power is lost
Crucial BX100 SSD
Available in 120GB, 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB capacities with respective MSRPs of £53.99, £84.99, £153.99, and £306.99, the Crucial BX100 delivers sequential reads and writes up to 535MB/s and 450MB/s on all file types. More than fifteen times faster than a hard drive, the Crucial BX100 allows users to boot up almost instantly, load programs in seconds, and accelerate demanding applications. And with Extreme Energy Efficiency technology, the BX100 is two times more energy efficient than a typical hard drive, allowing users to run their systems longer, using less power.
The BX100 is the first Crucial drive to include the Silicon Motion SM2246EN controller. Robert Fan, vice president and general manager of Silicon Motion U.S.A., said, "We are excited to be partnering with Crucial on the new BX100 SSD. Our high-performance and low power consumption SM2246EN controller combined with leading-edge Micron NAND helps make the BX100 fast, energy efficient, and affordable."
"We designed the MX200 and BX100 to meet the varied needs of the market, making it easier for anyone to move to an SSD, whether they are a seasoned computer enthusiast or an absolute beginner, all while keeping value top of mind," said Jonathan Weech, senior worldwide product manager, Crucial. "These drives leverage Micron's years of heritage in storage technology to deliver advanced features and performance, resulting in an unparalleled SSD experience for our consumers."
Availability
Both Crucial MX200 and BX100 2.5-inch drives will be available in Q1 2015 at Crucial.com and through select global partners. The Crucial MX200 will also be available in mSATA and M.2 form factors during Q1 2015.
14 Comments on Crucial Introduces Next Generation Solid State Drives
OK, done ranting, LOL.
AFAIK.. The M550 was a quick update from the (barely faster than an M4) M500.
MX200, updated M550
BX100, updated MX100
Be it MLC, TLC, newer/older flash with sometimes higher density (so therefore not always great at lower size options), larger spare area etc etc etc.
It's important to understand when companies don't separate each model (even with minute differences), the community at large tears them to shreds for not making the differences known and easily identifiable.
I would also argue that crucial, perhaps more than most, has a pretty distinguishable line-up. I would hazard a guess the mx200 is very similar to the 850 evo, but we shall see.
Regardless of how it performs, if it replaces the mx100 and helps push the 480-512gb market down below ~40¢/GB, that's welcome news. Prices have been *fairly* stagnant on that front (pretty much every drive is $200), and with the weird combo of higher density flash making smaller drives less appealing from a performance point of view, and those that have technologies in place to mitigate that (or vicariously otherwise enhance performance) being largely more expensive (at this moment), I happily greet products that can help jar the market loose, especially from Crucial/Micron themselves.
BX100 is not updated MX100, it is separated SSD with emphasis on budget price. However with Micron NAND not 2-tier brands like Kingston, Corsair and similar module manufacturers (rather NAND middlemans)
Line up: BX100, MX100, MX200
They priced it too high. It would have a spot on the market if it were 20% less expensive.
Another M550 in the making it seems.
Crucial marketing is confusing too. MX100 budget SDD is replaced by MX200 high performance SSD wich is supposed to replace M550 while being based on M600. Umm what?
What does that mean?
It means in reality the bx will be a sub-$200 500GB drive. If I were to guess (considering there are a lot of budget drives coming q1) the price will drop lower proportionally than the mx did, as some better-performing drives will fall in price to compete on cost. I would not be surprised to see .33-.34¢/GB as a full-time price (the 'on sale' price on many drives currently) across the line on many new budget drives coming this quarter.
The MX200 is based on the M600, but also has a slightly smaller size and uses cheaper nand. Considering the M600 wasn't a massive hit, and the biggest gains are by tech that helps the <500GB models suck less than the <512GB MX100 did, I expect these drives to not live long at their msrp. It will be interesting how they compete with the 850, but my gut says they will perform slightly worse, and hence be a little cheaper. I think a fair guess is to take the m550 and apply the standard 10-15% price reduction, with or without adjusting for he slightly smaller size...so approx .44-.46/GB.
As was said, the MX100 sits in the middle, probably proportionally, and that's exactly what it currently costs. I bet these drives end up being somewhere around 170, 200, 230 (500/512gb)....granted that is dictated by the asp of the competition...but all-in-all, not bad. The entry gets more accessible and the higher-end loses some of it's ridiculous margin.
IOW, they probably will be ~10-20% less expensive (depending on market conditions).