Introduction

Crucial, a subsidiary of Micron, a world leader in memory and flash production, brought us such wonderful SSDs as the C300 and m4 and has now released a new model called the M550. It is, as the name suggests, an incremental update to the M500 SSD that was released roughly one year ago. The M500 will stay on the market; however, the M550 is now the new high-performance option as the M500 is the more affordable model.

While a year has passed, not much has actually happened in the SSD market as we are still on the SATA 6 Gbps interface and, mostly, the same controllers and flash chips. The M550 is based on Marvell's new 88SS9189 controller, a small upgrade over the 88SS9187 in the M500. As flash chips, Crucial is using their own 20 nanometer class MLC NAND flash memory.

The M550 is available in capacities of 128 GB (CT128M550SSD1), 256 GB (CT256M550SSD1), 512 GB (CT512M550SSD1), 1 TB (CT1024M550SSD1), and various other form factors, like mSATA and M.2. Today, we are reviewing the 512 GB variant of the M550. Unlike the M500 Series, no overprovisioning is used, so you do get to use all the space the flash chips provide.

Pricing of the M550 512 GB is currently set at around $335 online.