For years, we've overlooked the Crucial brand for our enthusiast recommendations. We've felt let down by the company that introduced us to the C300, which was the world's first SATA 6Gbps SSD. Since then, Crucial's consumer SSDs have trailed the competition, and the performance gap between Crucial and other tier-one manufacturers has grown. Some of Crucial's products even have similar performance to SSDs coming from tier-two and tier-three manufacturers. It isn't just the performance that links Crucial SSDs to products from companies you most likely have never heard of; in some cases, the components inside the drives are identical.

But now Micron, Crucial's parent company, has a revamped leadership team, many of which led SanDisk before it was sold to Western Digital. Familiar names are popping up in press releases, LinkedIn profiles have changed, and with the new blood comes a new spirit. Micron's conservative past is far from over, but suddenly there is an enthusiasm that we haven't seen in some time.