The Crucial BX300 (480GB) SSD Review: Back To MLC
by Billy Tallis on August 29, 2017 9:00 AM ESTFinal Words
The Crucial BX200 comes in last place as often as not. The Crucial BX300 doesn't entirely reverse that, but it still provides one of the biggest generational jumps the SSD market has seen. Micron has learned from their mistakes with the BX200 and produced a worthy successor to the BX100. With the MX300 doing so well as a mainstream SSD with entry-level pricing, the focus of the BX line has shifted from simply being the cheaper option to being the drive designed specifically for the smaller capacities demanded by cost-conscious consumers.
Micron's large 384Gb 3D TLC die is ill-suited to making small SSDs, as 120-128GB SSDs end up only having 3 NAND chips on a four-channel controller, and even at larger capacities the flash is not well balanced across the controller channels. For the next generation of 3D NAND, Micron is addressing this issue by manufacturing both a large 512Gb die and a smaller 256Gb die. Since that 64-layer 3D NAND is still ramping up to full production, Micron has chosen for the BX300 to use their 256Gb 3D MLC that allows for a small SSD to be reasonably fast and free of the downsides of the TLC NAND that dominates the entry-level SSD market.
It's a bit of a puzzle how Micron can afford to sell an MLC SSD for less than their TLC SSD without making serious compromises elsewhere like using a DRAMless controller. But as long as they're willing to sell the BX300 at these prices, it's a great product.
The BX300 only has a few notable weaknesses. Micron's 32L 3D NAND is unusually power-hungry during sequential reads, despite being otherwise quite efficient. This also affects random reads to some extent. The BX300's peak performance is on average slightly below top-tier SATA drives like Samsung's 850 PRO and EVO and the Intel 545s, and it is outperformed by other 3D TLC drives like the MX300 and ADATA SU800 when they're able to make good use of their SLC caches. But this is offset by how well the BX300 retains its performance under heavier workloads and when operating with a nearly-full drive. In that respect, it has a significant advantage over the Crucial MX300.
| 120-128GB | 240-275GB | 480-525GB | 960-1050GB | 2TB | |
| Crucial BX300 | $59.99 (50¢/GB) | $89.99 (38¢/GB) | $149.99 (31¢/GB) | ||
| Crucial MX300 | $99.99 (40¢/GB) | $159.99 (32¢/GB) | $289.99 (29¢/GB) | $549.00 (27¢/GB) | |
| ADATA SU800 | $56.68 (44¢/GB) | $91.99 (36¢/GB) | $168.58 (33¢/GB) | $265.00 (26¢/GB) | |
| ADATA SU900 | $108.99 (43¢/GB) | $197.80 (39¢/GB) | |||
| ADATA XPG SX950 | $109.99 (46¢/GB) | $214.99 (45¢/GB) | |||
| Intel SSD 545s | $99.99 (39¢/GB) | $169.99 (33¢/GB) | |||
| Samsung 850 PRO | $114.99 (45¢/GB) | $212.19 (41¢/GB) | $420.99 (41¢/GB) | $897.99 (44¢/GB) | |
| Samsung 850 EVO | $89.99 (36¢/GB) | $174.75 (35¢/GB) | $299.99 (30¢/GB) | $715.00 (36¢/GB) |
The Samsung 850 EVO is available with very competitive pricing at the moment, shutting many drives using Micron 32L 3D NAND out of the market. The MSRP of the 480GB BX300 we tested is low enough to beat basically everything on a price per GB basis, and is far enough below the Samsung 850 EVO that it isn't an automatic decision to get the Samsung instead. The 240GB BX300 will debut with the same price as the 250GB Samsung 850 EVO, making the Samsung the better option for now.
The smallest capacity of the Crucial BX300 may prove to be the most popular and most competitive. There are other 120GB drives on the market that are priced a bit lower, but the BX300 has the advantage that it uses 3D MLC NAND, doesn't use a DRAMless controller and uses all four NAND channels on its controller. The 120GB BX300 will be slower than the 480GB model we tested, but it will retain the general characteristic of performing almost as well when it is full as when empty. This is far more important at such small capacities. The 120GB BX300 also benefits from lack of competition from Samsung: the planar TLC-based 750 EVO is not available at competitive prices and the 120GB 850 EVO and 128GB 850 PRO were discontinued when Samsung moved from 32L 3D NAND to 48L 3D NAND.
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khon - Tuesday, August 29, 2017 - link
I don't get the point of this product. If you care enough of performance to get MLC NAND rather than TLC NAND, why would you get a SATA SSD ?bill.rookard - Tuesday, August 29, 2017 - link
Sometimes it's just form factor. You may have a laptop that only has regular SATA SSD's or are upgrading to a SSD from a spinny-disk (which are decidedly awful in laptops). Or - perhaps you have a NAS or server which uses 2.5" SATA drives, or a desktop that doesn't have an M.2 slot.There are lots of reasons to have a SATA option.
nathanddrews - Tuesday, August 29, 2017 - link
True. I have a couple pre-NVME computers that need an upgrade, so that's why I go SATA.eek2121 - Tuesday, August 29, 2017 - link
1) Buy M.2 adapter card.2) Use clover to boot from NVME
3) ???
4) PROFIT!!!
Alexvrb - Wednesday, August 30, 2017 - link
The cheapest and easiest way to upgrade a conventional SATA-equipped system to an SSD is with a SATA SSD. Also M.2 is a form factor, not an interface. A lot of the entry-level / affordable M.2 drives are SATA-based. The added costs and complexities to get something substantially faster than SATA might not be worth it. Meanwhile a sub-$100 Evo drive can help revive an older system for cheap, it's the same price as competing products and it's somewhat better.Also, if you're talking about using Clover/Tianocore with a legacy non-UEFI bios, it's kind of a mild nuisance. Especially if you're doing it for someone else on a budget. Plus you still need to use the existing mechanical clunker SATA drive (well you could add a USB stick I guess) for the BIOS to boot and load Tianocore.
Last but not least if you're talking about an older laptop, you might very well be stuck with SATA or mSATA. So might as well make the most of it. There are a lot of OEM systems with decent enough processors, saddled with horribly slow HDDs. Easy and cheap way to rev them up.
leexgx - Saturday, September 2, 2017 - link
he thinks the laptop is a PC :PMajGenRelativity - Tuesday, August 29, 2017 - link
People also have concerns about life expectancy of their hard drives. As far as performance, SATA is still cheaper than PCIe, so cost plays a factor as well.BrokenCrayons - Tuesday, August 29, 2017 - link
Although I'll probably NEVER hit an endrance wall with TLC NAND, since the prices for TLC and MLC in are disturbingly close at this point, I see no reason not to purchase MLC. In fact, I just bought two 240GB and one 480GB SATA SSD two weeks ago and all of them were 3D MLC because there was no difference in price. I think it might be more reasonable to ask why anyone would bother with TLC in SATA or any other form factor given the current state of the market.littlebitstrouds - Tuesday, August 29, 2017 - link
Really it's quite easy... If MLC is better for endurance, and we can't find SLC anymore, without going full enterprise, anyone who engineers systems for stability will inevitably take a MLC nand storage device over a TLC, all other parts being equal. Just because you can't see a reason, doesn't mean there isn't a market for it. I guarantee you don't understand every aspect of every engineering problem that exists, which means you may not understand why a company, with shareholders, would devise such a product.sonny73n - Wednesday, August 30, 2017 - link
Seriously, you said it's easy to see the reason why but you kept ranting on without giving us a reason why they keep producing TLC and selling them at the same price with MLC.