A new breed of value SSD. The consumer solid-state drive (SSD) market can be split into two broad categories. On the one hand you have fast drives that connect to the system via a PCIe Gen 3 x4 interface, often hitting sequential speeds in excess of 2GB/s. The other end of the spectrum is home to SSDs that use cheaper, slower Nand and mate this with a Sata interface that limits performance to no more than 550MB/s.

Though we would enjoy seeing the industry move over to PCIe en masse, the significant bulk of sales still occur in the Sata market, presented in either a 2.5in aluminium enclosure or, lately, through space-saving M.2. Crucial is tapping into this fertile ground by releasing another mass-market drive. Enter the MX500.