Well, dye my hair red and call me Harpo. A triple-level-cell (TLC) NAND-based SSD that I can recommend to users without a lot of caveats finally exists. That is, only if they can't find a like-priced multi-level-cell (MLC) drive. (And only then.)

30GB MLC-style cache; Relatively cheap; 750GB SSD

NVMe drives still much faster

Well, dye my hair red and call me Harpo. A triple-level-cell (TLC) NAND-based SSD that I can recommend to users without a lot of caveats finally exists. That is, only if they can't find a like-priced multi-level-cell (MLC) drive. (And only then.) The drive in question?

If you don't own an SSD by now, you really should. Nothing is quite as satisfying as seeing Windows boot up in mere seconds, versus the half a minute or more it sometimes takes with traditional hard disk drives.

Great overall price; low cost per gig; solid performance

None

Final Thoughts So the MX300 is the first consumer product to make use of Micron's 3D TLC NAND. Crucial took a different approach than Samsung with their first 3D NAND product. The MX300 is not designed to be the fastest consumer SATA SSD out there like Samsung's 850 Pro.

– Price; – Solid midrange performance; – Spacer and Acronis True Image HD software activation key included; – 256 AES encryption

– Only a 3year warranty

Item as described. Good performance.

Micron; Crucial's parent company, is the second to market with 3D NAND flash in a consumer SSD, which it developed with Intel. Samsung was the first, and uses its own implementation for the 850 Pro range.

Fast read and write speeds aren't the only things the MX300 has to offer. Along with thermal and power loss protection, TRIM support and active garbage collection, the drive features AES 256-bit full disk encryption and is compatible with both the TCG Opal and IEEE 1667 specifications.

Available in 275GB; 525GB; 750GB and 1050GB capacities; Good sequential and random read and write performance; Performs equally well with compressible and incompressible data; Large DRAM cache; Dynamic Write Acceleration; Data Defense and RAIN technologies; AES 256-bit full disk encryption; TCG Opal...

Write speed drops when SLC cache is full

With the Crucial MX300, you have to take the good with the bad. There are several points to consider, and the pro's and cons each have several items that give us a full picture of the overall drive. Let's start at the SSD controller, which is the heart of the system.

Acceptable mainstream performance; Low power / Great battery life in notebooks; Low cost; Decent capacity scaling (2TB Coming Soon

No 4TB option; Not as low cost as we want; 4-Channels doesn't deliver high random performance at low queue depths

If my review of the first solid-state drive with 3D flash memory, the well-balanced Samsung SSD 850 Evo , piqued your interest, you'll be happy to know there's a new player in town: the all-new MX300 drive from Crucial.

The Crucial MX300 SSD is competitively priced and delivers fast performance; The solid-state drive uses efficient 3D flash memory and provides strong security with hardware encryption

The drive has a short three-year warranty and trails behind its main competitor; the more expensive Samsung 850 Evo; in performance and features

The MX300 SSD series offers several, somewhat different, capacities with the 2050GB being the highest. Like all of the drives in the series, the 2050GB comes with Adaptive Thermal Protection to help keep the drive cool and protects data with both AES 256-bit encryptions and RAIN technology.

2TB of capacity for a good price; Adaptive Thermal Protection; AES 256-it encryption

Samsung 850 EVO 2TB; Samsung EVO 4TB; Crucial MX300 1050GB; 2TB of capacity for a good price; Adaptive Thermal Protection; AES 256-it encryption; Not a strong performer in any of our tests