Crucial Introduces Next Generation Solid State Drives

[btarunr]

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:

• 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

Each Crucial MX200 SSD includes Acronis True Image HD data migration software that moves all files, operating systems, settings, and programs from an existing hard drive to a newly installed SSD. This patented disk-imaging technology powered by Acronis' AnyData Engine allows users to quickly, easily, and accurately utilise their new SSD as their system drive.

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.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[rtwjunkie]

At the rate manufacturers are pumping out new replacement SSD models, it almost is too much to figure out. Crucial have, for instance, in the span of a year, produced the M500, M550, MX100, and now the MX200. Just build me a decent SSD, and leave it at that...maybe an occasional firmware update. Make it like HDD's, with one model lasting years and still being relevant.

OK, done ranting, LOL.

 

[cokker]

At the rate manufacturers are pumping out new replacement SSD models, it almost is too much to figure out. Crucial have, for instance, in the span of a year, produced the M500, M550, MX100, and now the MX200. Just build me a decent SSD, and leave it at that...maybe an occasional firmware update. Make it like HDD's, with one model lasting years and still being relevant.

OK, done ranting, LOL.

I agree, firmware updates cost time and money, why not relabel an SSD and charge for it...

AFAIK.. The M550 was a quick update from the (barely faster than an M4) M500.

MX200, updated M550
BX100, updated MX100

 

[alwayssts]

At the rate manufacturers are pumping out new replacement SSD models, it almost is too much to figure out. Crucial have, for instance, in the span of a year, produced the M500, M550, MX100, and now the MX200. Just build me a decent SSD, and leave it at that...maybe an occasional firmware update. Make it like HDD's, with one model lasting years and still being relevant.

OK, done ranting, LOL.

While I totally hear where you're coming from, each has their own purpose, and their own competition.

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.

 

[Chaitanya]

I saw these crucial M.2 drives for sale at B&H few days back. I couldn't find them on crucial website which was kind of weird. I hope the upcoming ultrabooks based on Broadwell platform feature a M.2 SSD rather than the mSata for better storage performance.

 

[RejZoR]

Aaaargh, still stuck at 1TB... Another 2-3 years for 2TB I guess... Seems like new SSHD's from Seagate (4TB+128GB SSD cache) are becoming more and more viable...

 

[HouBa]

MX200, updated M550
BX100, updated MX100

MX200 come out of famous Micron M600.
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

 

[Brusfantomet]

Had a glimmer of hope when i saw the m.2 version, but noticed the "s-ata copatabilety notch" and was disapointed

 

[Aquinus]

You know, SSDs are fast enough at this point. There isn't a whole lot of difference between 500MB/s and 1GB/s for mass storage (as I will attest by having a RAID of SSDs,) since the speed of I/O has removed mass storage as a bottleneck. What I like is how prices on SSDs keep coming down. I've never seen ~500GB SSDs be so reasonably priced. It makes you wonder where SSD pricing will be come July or this time next year.

 

[rtwjunkie]

You know, SSDs are fast enough at this point.

That pretty much summed up my whole rant. It alsmost seems as if they have to find something for their R&D guys to do until they really DO need them!

 

[Arctucas]

<SNIP> NAND middlemans

<SNIP>

Which is why I would stick to either Samsung or Toshiba.

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

They're all starting to make the same mistake OCZ made. Focus on one or two product lines with good performance and a good price. Every time they release a new product they bump the price for a few months and clutter the market. That's not the approach that made Crucial and Samsung successful.

 

[Tomorrow]

So if BX100 costs the same as MX100 and performs roughly the same but carries an inferior SM controller why should i got for it instead of MX100?

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?

 

[rtwjunkie]

@Tomorrow: You understand my complaint completely!!

 

[alwayssts]

So if BX100 costs the same as MX100 and performs roughly the same but carries an inferior SM controller why should i got for it instead of MX100?

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?

The starting msrp is $200 for the bx 500gb. The starting msrp of the mx100 512gb was $230. The price of almost every decent 480-512gb drive is currently $200.

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).