At first we would like to thank Crucial for sending a sample of their P1 1TB M.2 Type 2280 SSD for testing and reviewing.

 

 

 

About Crucial:

 

“Looking for computer memory or a new storage drive? You've come to the right place!

 

Crucial is a global brand of Micron Technology, Inc., one of the largest memory and flash storage manufacturers in the world. We make computer memory upgrades (DRAM) and solid state drives (SSDs), and offer more than 250,000 upgrades for over 50,000 systems. For 17 years, we've sought to provide the Crucial Difference — award-winning products, outstanding support, and a team of memory and storage experts who explain complex lingo in everyday terms. We're here to help improve the performance of your system.

 

Crucial memory and SSDs have been qualified and approved by major original equipment manufacturers, and every single module that leaves our doors has been rigorously tested at the component and module level. That's a big deal in the memory industry, but it's not all. When it comes to our SSDs, each drive undergoes over a thousand hours of prerelease validation testing and hundreds of qualification tests to ensure optimal reliability and performance.

 

To find upgrades in just a few clicks, our award-winning Crucial System Scanner or Crucial Memory Advisor™ tool will identify compatible upgrades for your system, and if you order on Crucial.com, we guarantee compatibility — or your money back. With fast and free shipping, outstanding tech support, and an exhaustive library of articles, videos, and install guides, we make it easy to find and install the right upgrade for your system.

 

Let us be your memory and storage experts.”

 

Product Features:

 

Room to Spare

Securely load and store up to 1TB of important files on Micron NAND in a tiny M.2 form factor.

 

Vital Performance

NVMe PCIe technology delivers sequential read/write speeds up to 2,000/1,750 MB/s so work gets done faster.

 

Lasting Value

The Crucial P1 SSD is designed to be the only storage upgrade you'll need with an affordable blend of performance and capacity.

 

5-year Limited Warranty

We back thousands of validation hours, dozens of qualification tests, and a heritage of award-winning SSDs with a 5-year limited warranty.

 

One of the Largest Storage Manufacturers Worldwide

Crucial is backed by Micron’s expert quality and engineering innovation. Micron has produced some of the world's most advanced memory and storage technologies for 40 years.

 

Product Specifications:

 

 

After taking a look at the 500GB P1 SSD from Crucial back in December of 2018, it is time to check out the 1TB version of the drive, which is advertised as having a noticeable better performance. The packaging of the drive did remain the same, with the cardboard external enclosure, that shows the total drive capacity and the interface it operates on:

 

 

 

On the back side of the box, we will get to see some product highlights such as the offered data transfer software, the enclosed installation guide but also the upgradeable firmware. The product is also backed up by a 5-year warranty:

 

 

 

Inside the box we will get to see the advertised Quick Installation Guide, but also a transparent plastic mold, which holds the drive protected during transit:

 

 

 

The small guide is pretty straight forward, since most of the resources are available online anyway:

 

 

 

P1 comes with the usual M.2 2280 drive format, while on the front we can spot a sticker with the product code name, its power rating, the serial number but also the currently installed firmware:

 

 

 

On the back side there aren’t any more components, but only placeholders for two more NAND ICs and a RAM cache:

 

 

 

After carefully removing the sticker, we can take a look at the drive internals:

 

 

 

The drive comes with two Micron 64-layer 3D QLC NAND packages, each having 512GB of raw storage:

 

 

 

Next to it, we do have a Micron 1GB DDR3 IC:

 

 

 

The Silicon Motion SM2263ENG controller is a four-channel part that supports the NVMe 1.3 standard, together with full drive encryption (TCG Opal, AES):

 

 

 

When the drive is accessed, a green SMD LED will also blink on the drive PCB:

 

 

 

Test Bench:

 

CPU: Intel I5 9700K Retail

CPU Cooler: Deepcool Captain 240 EX RGB AIO

Motherboard: Gigabyte Z370 AORUS Ultra Gaming

RAM: Patriot Memory Viper RGB Series DDR4

Video: KFA2 GeForce GTX 1060 OC 6GB

Power Supply: Cooler Master 850W

SSD: OCZ Vector 150

Case: Cooler Master ATCS 840

 

 

The drive has arrived unformatted:

 

 

For testing purposes, we have formatted it NTFS; here is the total remaining free space afterwards:

 

 

With the help of AIDA64, we could extract more information regarding the drive:

 

The Tests

 

HDTach Short Test

Blank SSD

 

HDTach Long Test

 

Blank SSD

 

CrystalMark HDD Test Suite

AIDA64 Disk Test Suite

PCMark05 HDD Test Suite

CrystalDisk Test Suite (Random)

HDTune Test Suite

Blank SSD

 

PCMark Vantage HDD Test Suite

 

PCMark 7

 

Anvil [Read]

Anvil [Write]

 

Extra Tests:

 

AS SSD Benchmark

Blank SSD

AS SSD Benchmark (IOPS)

Blank SSD

ATTO Disk Benchmark

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PCMark 8

Blank SSD

 

 

 

The Tests

 

HDTach Short Test

Filled SSD

 

HDTach Long Test

 

Filled SSD

 

CrystalMark HDD Test Suite

AIDA64 Disk Test Suite

PCMark05 HDD Test Suite

CrystalDisk Test Suite (Random)

HDTune Test Suite

Filled SSD

 

PCMark Vantage HDD Test Suite

 

PCMark 7

 

Anvil [Read]

Anvil [Write]

 

Extra Tests:

 

AS SSD Benchmark

Filled SSD

AS SSD Benchmark (IOPS)

Filled SSD

ATTO Disk Benchmark

Filled SSD

PCMark 8

Filled SSD

 

 

 

The 1TB version of the P1 NVMe SSD definitely offers more performance versus the 500GB model, and can keep the write speeds up for even longer, thanks to more SLC buffer (12GB versus 5GB on the 500GB drive). The increased DDR3 buffer also seems to come into play but expect a visible speed drop when writing large files to the drive. If the drive is operated in mainstream, home computers you won’t observe this limitation, but in production workstations were data changes frequently, the TLC write speed limitation will become more evident.

 

While the 500GB drive has had a rated endurance of 100TBW, which equals to 54GB per day for five years, the 1TB model raises the endurance to 200TBW, which means about 109GB per day, during a period of 5 years; this rating is quite a bit lower than the MP510 drive from CORSAIR or the P34A80 from Silicon Power.

 

The 1TB P1 drive can be purchased online for about 106 Euros.

Crucial P1 1TB Type 2280 SSD is Recommended for:

 

 

We would like to thank again to Crucial for making this review possible!