Page 10 - Conclusion
A PCIe 4.0-based drive is a PCIe 4.0-based drive even if it is made to be lighter on your wallet. Did the Crucial P5 Plus take budget speed to a whole new level compared to last generation PCIe 3.0-based drives? I would say so. The Crucial P5 Plus 1TB is a great budget drive that is well-optimized for day-to-day Windows usage for the average user. In our PCMark 10 benchmark, this SSD was almost as fast the Western Digital WD_BLACK SN850 NVMe SSD 1TB, which is very impressive. Its 600TBW write endurance rating also matches the venerable WD_BLACK. I also like the fact the P5 Plus has full drive encryption support and comes with Acronis' excellent True Image software. Crucial products are also one of the most reliable in the market, but should anything go wrong, the company backs it up with a solid 5-year warranty. Of course, you do have to keep in mind this is still a budget drive, as reflected in its medium workload performance and, in many of the tests, its write speed. That said, the P5 Plus is no doubt faster in most respects compared to PCIe 3.0-based NVMe SSDs, which makes it a very respectable product in many ways. Unfortunately, despite this being more of a budget model, for about $180 at press time, it is the same price as the SN850 1TB, and the WD_BLACK is a considerably faster drive in every way. Meanwhile, the XPG Gammix S70 Blade 1TB is $170 at press time, which delivers generally better performance overall. If Crucial can drop its price below that of the Gammix S70 Blade, this would have been a very competitive model. But for now, for the same price as the WD_BLACK, the SN850 1TB is simply a better product overall.
Crucial provided this product to APH Networks for the purpose of evaluation.
Since April 30, 2007, Number Ratings have been dropped for all CPUs, motherboards, RAM, SSD/HDDs, and graphics cards. This is to ensure the most appropriate ratings are reflected without the inherent limits of using numbers. Everything else will continue using the Number Rating System.
More information in our Review Focus.
The Crucial P5 Plus 1TB is an excellent budget PCIe 4.0-based NVMe SSD, but its price needs to come down to actual budget levels to be competitive.
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. A Closer Look, Test System
3. Benchmark: AIDA64 Disk Benchmark
4. Benchmark: ATTO Disk Benchmark
5. Benchmark: Crystal Disk Mark 8.0
6. Benchmark: HD Tach 3.0.1.0
7. Benchmark: HD Tune Pro 5.70
8. Benchmark: PassMark PerformanceTest 10
9. Benchmark: PCMark 10
10. Conclusion
