When the Crucial MX300 series came out back in June 2016 it was a big deal as it was their first drive with Micron 3D TLC NAND Flash memory. We reviewed the 750GB and 1TB capacities last year and found them to be pretty solid drives. Crucial has since released the successor to that series with the new MX500 SSD lineup. The Crucial MX500 series is the first mainstream consumer product to use Micron's latest 64-layer 3D TLC NAND. This drive series is offered in both 2.5-inch and M.2 SATA form factors in capacities ranging from 250GB to 2TB.

When it comes to performance, this series offers sequential reads and writes of up to 560 MB/s and 510 MB/s with Random reads and writes of up to 95,000 IOPS and 90,000 IOPS. Like the other MX series drives before, the MX500 offers hardware-based encryption and integrated power loss prevention for when the power goes out unexpectedly. The 3D TLD NAND on the MX500 series is based on Micron's 2nd generation of 3D NAND technology. Micron is using a stackable 64-layer, 256 gigabit die on this series to come up with a 64GB part that is said to offer good density and solid performance with exceptional longevity.