Crucial MX200 SSD Review (500GB/1TB)

POWER CONSUMPTION

For our power consumption testing, we have the drive connected to the system as a secondary drive. To record the wattage, we use an Amprobe AM-270 multimeter connected in line with the 5v power on our SATA power cable to the drive. The multimeter records the min/max amperage draw from the drive over our testing period.

We also record the drive’s sequential and random read and write power draw using Iometer. We then take the values recorded and calculate the wattage of the drive. Some of the results may seem high compared to a standard notebook HDD because as these are peak values under load. When we see average power draw, SSDs are still more power efficient because they only hit max power for a short period of time.

Based upon the rating on the MX200s’ stickers, the max power consumption is rated for up to 8.5W. In testing we found they were able to stay well under this value. Max draw was under 5W. At idle they consumed very little power at 60 and 65 milliwatts respectfully. This is very good for those who plan on putting this SSD in a laptop, Ultrabook, or tablet.

REPORT ANALYSIS AND FINAL THOUGHTS

While the MX200’s performance in our synthetic test was great and we were even able to hit just under 100K random read IOPs, PCMark 8 revealed a drop in performance compared to the cheaper MX100 during the recovery phase, which is most important as it represents consumer workloads. However, it showed that the MX200 carried over a similar, but improved performance pattern of the Micron M600. During our power testing, we found that the MX200 had very good idle power consumption at only 60mW and 65mW respectively.

While we feel that the Crucial MX200 series offers consumers a good bang for their buck from the inclusion of migration software, 7mm to 9.5″ spacer and features; it could be priced a bit more competitively. It’s just at this price point we would like to see a bit more performance over their MX100 line and a longer warranty. However, keep in mind, they have also released the new BX100 series to compete in the low-end/entry level market, so the price increase over it and the MX100 is understandable. And, the endurance rating for these new MX200 SSDs further validate the price premium as it is significantly higher than their predecessor’s. This alone helps to differentiate this drive from their MX100 line.

At the end of the day, the MX200 is mid-tier performing SSD packed with a ton of enterprise features that improve reliability. The fact that Crucial has broadened their form factors to include both M.2 and mSATA to cover a larger market is a smart move on their part. This time around the MX200 introduces Micron’s Dynamic Write Acceleration feature under a Crucial branded SSD. With less parallelism going on, the less performance the SSD can sustain, however, while we weren’t able to test out the difference between an SSD in this new series which had this feature, performance between them should be very similar. It is a great feature to include, especially considering how few NAND packages the smaller form factors have.

The last time a Crucial MX series SSD went through our Test Bench it won the Top Value award with ease. However, this time around, their higher end MX200 2.5″ SSDs are awarded our Silver Seal!

Check out the Crucial MX200 SSDs on Amazon Today!