Page 10 - Conclusion
Is the Crucial P5 Plus 2TB with heatsink still fundamentally the same thing under the hood compared to the original P5 Plus 1TB I reviewed back in 2021? Other than the obvious of having an included heatsink, the specifications remain the same. This means it has excellent write endurance at 1200TBW, has full drive encryption support, comes with Acronis' excellent True Image software, and still uses Micron's B47R 176-layer triple-level cells. Of course, being part of the P5 Plus series, unlike the P3 Plus series, the SSD we are reviewing today has onboard DRAM, which is generally preferable for better real-world performance. As a Crucial product, you can be sure it is a reliable solid state drive backed by a 5-year warranty. As far as performance is concerned, the 2TB model seemed to be at best comparable to at worst significantly slower than the 1TB unit I reviewed two years ago in pretty much every test. The original 1TB model was already no speed demon being a budget mainstream drive and scoring accordingly, so it seems the 2023 2TB version has a bit of a performance gap. For about $130 at press time, it costs $30 more than the non-heatsink version, which is a pretty significant price premium. Furthermore, the WD_BLACK SN850X 2TB is only $140 with a heatsink at press time, which is a significantly higher performing model. The 2TB version of the speedy ADATA Legend 960 is $120, while the Lexar Professional NM800 PRO 2TB is the same price in a different speed grade. I feel like the Crucial P5 Plus 2TB with heatsink, while offers passable performance in day-to-day use at an affordable price, could definitely be more competitive in both speed and price to make it more desirable against the stiff competition.
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 2TB (Heatsink Version) is a classic budget mainstream PCIe 4.0-based NVMe SSD from the company, but its performance to price ratio has room for improvement to remain competitive in 2023.
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 Tune Pro 5.70
7. Benchmark: PassMark PerformanceTest 10
8. Benchmark: PCMark 10
9. Benchmark: 3DMark
10. Conclusion
