Crucial M550 Series

Can't wait to try these new SSD's from Crucial.

These are what the M500 Series should have been.


See:
Crucial M550 512 And 1024 GB SSD Review - Tom's Hardware

See:
AnandTech | Crucial M550 Review: 128GB, 256GB, 512GB and 1TB Models Tested

 

The Tom's Hardware graph suggests the idle power consumption problem is only slightly reduced compared to the M500. Anandtech shows the same situation for idle but the M550 has excellent slumber power consumption.

Other SSDs may be preferable for those wanting maximum usage time away from a power socket.

John

 

Samsung's seem to offer the best for power consumption. Whatever is in my Vaio Pro (it's an M.2 Samsung of some sort), the system sips about 3W at idle. Pretty incredible. Now if I can just find a good deal on an M.2 256GB Samsung... heck even find one period.

But glad to see Crucial making improvements nevertheless. They are at least a solid and less expensive option for users.

 

TweakTown 1TB review is up. Other sizes to follow. M.2 and mSATA will max out at 512GB
Crucial M550 1TB SSD Review | TweakTown

 

Bullrun, good find.


See:
Crucial M550 1TB SSD Review - Benchmarks - PCMark 8 2.0 Advanced Tests | TweakTown


The SanDisk Extreme II is still the king of consistency it seems (at least in this iteration). I'm surprised that it is better than the Intel 730 480GB drive too.

The M500's (especially the lower capacity versions) are very, very slow - but so are most other drives shown here at the 'steady state worst case' scores: they're slower than a properly partitioned (current) HDD. Just like I've been saying for years now.

When performance drops like that; my first reaction is (was); uhm... is the SSD going to die now?

While the M550's performance in this metric is also less than stellar (at steady state worst case), it at least makes up for it by being noticeably faster than any other drive when allowed to recover (even at the 5 minute rest mark; it is still acceptable).


From what I can see here, a SanDisk Extreme II 480GB SSD for O/S and Programs matched with a 1TB Crucial M550 for Data seems to be the best match for an all solid state notebook right now with performance and capacity being equally important.

Still no sign of the M550's in my neck of the woods though. Something to look forward to.

 

tilleroftheearth, I couldn't argue against the SEII + M550 combo. I'd still like to see a [H]ardOCP Steady State 70/30 Read/Write Mix, which was tailored to O/S operation. I'd like to see it for the EVO too. The SEII 240GB and M500 480GB were stellar performers in this metric. I think the 550 would do well here also, which bodes well for O/S operation too. I think EVO might do well here as well, Samsung did emphasize low queue depth performance with it. The 840 TLC was a poor performer in this metric. I'd say the first place that showed the "real world" mediocre performance of the Samsung Pro, above a QD of 1, was this same metric. TweakTown's new test backs that up.


We have been saying here, for some time, to avoid the models below 480GB in the M500 line. The M550 may make the 256GB a viable alternative in it's size class.

 

Well, that's annoying, I just bought an M500.
Not sure whether to send it back and get an M550 instead.

 

I've got two in the box too

 

Huh. It shows the M500 gets better overall battery life than the Samsung 840 EVO. From what I've been reading the Samsung drives sip power at idle (like < 0.2W) compared with Crucial (~ 0.8W).

 

It is showing battery use while being used, not simply (static) idle power.

Both can be right.

 

Use of an overall battery benchmark means the result is subject to other variables. Tom's Hardware somehow directly measures the power supplied to the SSD so I have more faith in their results.

They could have monitored the SSD temperature as a separate check. My own observation of the EVO using less power than the M500 was confirmed by the EVO running cooler.

John

 

Anyone been able to find any word on UK pricing?

 

Which one do you want? Choose from here.

John

 

It's the same for me, but I'm gonna keep it, the M550 it's more expensive and after all, they share pretty much the same technology/features, and more than that the M500 has more parity bits.

 

Even so, the fact that "real world" test resulted in better or even comparable battery life is interesting. I much rather see that than actual measured consumption.

 

The only one that isn't there - the 256GB m.2.
That explains why I hadn't found anything when I Googled the model number.

After much consideration, I'll stick with the M500.
It was only supposed to be a stop-gap until something significantly better came along.

 

Hey guys,

I'm looking to upgrade my Samsung NPX900XC's HDD. I'm looking at the 240gb range. I have read John's review in regards to the power consumption between Crucial's M500 vs Samsung Evo.
How much difference between the two will have a real impact for the battery life? I'm just a student that often brings my laptop to uni for a whole day doing the basic/common stuff, and will usually have a maximum of 4-6 hours usage out of the laptop a day. Will the Crucial M500 still be sufficient to maintain that battery life (including BLE)?
In terms of bang for buck, I'm definitely really interested at the Crucial range at the moment.

Any advice would be appreciated!

Cheers

 

How to interpret my average 0.65W difference in power consumption?

If you have BLE (Battery Life Extender) enabled and assuming you are shutting down at 5% remaining then the available capacity is (62 x 80%) - (62 x 5%) = 46.5Whr. If that is giving 5 hours run time then your average power drain is 9.3W. If the new SSD uses 0.6W more than the old one then the average power drain would become 9.9W and your run time reduces to 4.7 hours.

0.3 hours is only 18 minutes which you might find acceptable. If you take measures such as further dimming the display to increase the usage time then, as the power used by the rest of the system is reduced, the effect of the SSD power difference becomes larger and would become about 0.5 hours under the lowest power condition.

As an aside, if you are regularly running the computer until it stops then it may be worthwhile disabling BLE and increasing the charge level (ideally to 90-95% and then re-enable BLE) in order to avoid the damage caused by fully draining the battery.

John