PC World (2019-04)

72 PCWorld APRIL 2019

REVIEWS CRUCIAL P1 NVME SSD

form factor. The drive comes in 500GB and

1TB flavors that retail for $90 and $170

respectively. That’s a good $80 cheaper than

most of the competition currently. They carry

a 5-year warranty and are rated for 100TBW

(TeraBytes Written) for every 500GB of

capacity.

That’s a relatively low TBW rating for an

NVMe drive, but it’s no doubt part of the

reason for the low price. The scuttlebutt

around the industry is that TBW

ratings are worst-case scenarios

that are generally exceeded by a

large margin. And that’s still 54GB

per day over the 5 years—more

than most users are likely to write.

And it is just writes—reading

doesn’t affect longevity.

PERFORMANCE

Before I get to the results, please

note that I tested the 1TB version

of the drive. The 500MB version

which I did not test, while

cheaper, claims half the write performance.

That’s a common phenomenon caused by

having only half as many chips to spread the

data across. It’s also likely to have less cache

and fall prey to the slow TLC writes sooner.

More on that in a paragraph or two.

The 1TB P1 actually passed all our standard

tests, including the 48GB copies with flying

colors, though it will never be mistaken for a

Samsung 970 Pro, or even a 970 EVO. I’ve

Sequential Write

4K (Q =32, T=1)

Sequential Read

4K (Q =32, T=1)

CrystalDiskMark 6

(MBps)

LONGER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE

530

562

2,574

3,485

1,664

2,010

1,440

3,335

Samsung 970 Evo Plus

Crucial P1

WD Black NVMe SN750

Samsung 860 QVO (SATA)

The P1 looks pretty much like any other 2280 NVMe/M.2 drive. It’s just cheaper.