The Crucial MX500 is a solid-state drive in the 2.5" form factor, launched in January 2018. It is available in capacities ranging from 250 GB to 4 TB. This page reports specifications for the 1 TB variant. With the rest of the system, the Crucial MX500 interfaces using a SATA 6 Gbps connection. The SSD controller is the SM2259H from Silicon Motion, a DRAM cache chip is available. Crucial has installed 176-layer TLC NAND flash on the MX500, the flash chips are made by Micron. Please note that this SSD is sold in multiple variants with different NAND flash or controller, which could affect performance, the "Notes" section at the end of this page has more info. To improve write speeds, a pseudo-SLC cache is used, so bursts of incoming writes are soaked up more quickly. The cache is sized at 36 GB, once it is full, writes complete at 450 MB/s. Copying data out of the SLC cache (folding) completes at 350 MB/s. The MX500 is rated for sequential read speeds of up to 560 MB/s and 510 MB/s write; random IOPS reach up to 95K for reads and 90K for writes.
At its launch, the SSD was priced at 260 USD. The warranty length is set to five years, which is an excellent warranty period. Crucial guarantees an endurance rating of 360 TBW, a relatively low value compared to other SSDs.