If you’re not a data hoarder like myself, it’s tough to make an SSD review sexy. The layperson, for example, will often glaze past the pleasure and pain of the installation experience. That satisfying click of a Crucial P3 Plus 1TB slotting home into an M.2 slot is a thrill lost on many of you.
So too is the feeling of being hard done by, when all pretence is stripped away to reveal the actual size of what you’ll be playing with. Useable capacity: always more shrivelled than advertised.
Odd innuendo aside, I did find the Crucial P3 Plus to be a high-performance and reliable piece of hardware. During my tests, it consistently put the ‘solid’ in solid-state drive, and it deals in blazingly-fast read and write speeds; thanks to the aforementioned PCIe 4.0 interface and NVMe protocol.
Crucial P3 Plus 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 2280 SSD Review
Though I probably would have liked the 4TB version roughly four times better, my 1TB capacity review unit provided ample storage space for a slew of files and applications. Additionally, its compact M.2 2280 form factor made it a great choice for use in laptops, small form factor PCs and current-gen gaming consoles that bear the requisite expansion bays.
For the latter, I’m looking at you, PlayStation 5. Especially considering my PSN account has somehow swollen to 800+ digital games. I’ll take all the space I can get. Though I do recommend you PS faithful buy a heatsink for this first. Whichever hardware you choose to slap this into, installation of these drives can’t be simpler. One quick slide and a retaining screw later, and you’re ready to start piling up gigabyte after gigabyte – and at very decent speeds, no less.
As for other interesting features, the P3 Plus is also built with high-quality components and advanced error-correction technology, ensuring that your data is safe and secure. Unlike its predecessors, it’s rocking a 12nm controller (the Phison PS5021-E21T) which has the claim of being 25% better in terms of power draw and performance.
PROS AND CONS
When it comes to speed, the P3 Plus has respective read and write speeds of 5000 MB/s and 4200 MB/s. That’s pretty middling when compared to competing drives of a similar configuration. Basically, the only scenario where it’ll blow your mind is if the system in question is being upgraded from ye olde mechanical hard drives.
If you’re wondering what being “Gen4” means in terms of performance and the context of everything else, the P3 Plus delivers load times and data transfers up to 8.9x faster than the previous big boy on the block, SATA storage solutions. It’s also up to 43% faster than the fastest Gen3 SSD (and you can expect decent backward compat capabilities with that Gen). So, yeah, this is well worth the upgrade if your budget allows.
For those of you coming at this SSD with a console in mind, you should know that this drive works with a PS5. And that’s even though it’s a pip (500MB/s) slower than Sony’s 5500 MB/s recommendation. Meanwhile, PC folk looking to run their Steam library off this will appreciate the quick loading offered by random read and writes of 680K and 850K IOPS. Once again, this isn’t top-dog performance compared to what’s around. An IOPS mark of 1,000 is, of course, where you can expect an apex PCIe 4.0 SSD to max out.
It’s also worth noting that this unit comes with the benefit of being a QLC-based drive – which allows it to come in higher capacity variants (the aforementioned 4TB is where it tops out). However, you should know that QLC technology is tempered by a less-than-impressive terabytes written (TBW) rating. When it comes to durability, you’ll probably get five years out of this before (admittedly minor) degradation begins to set in.
CONCLUSION
Overall, the Crucial P3 Plus is quite a decent choice for anyone looking for a mid-performance, high-capacity SSD. With its PCIe 4.0 interface and NVMe protocol, this SSD is able to deliver more than capable read and write speeds, making it ideal for use in high-end gaming PCs and Sony’s fanciest console.
Furthermore, the M.2 2280 form factor also makes it easy to install and integrate into a wide range of systems. I’m a big fan of Crucial’s work and would like to tell you that the Crucial P3 Plus 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 2280 SSD is a top-of-the-line storage option, but that can only be said if you’re coming from a life spent using HDDs. That said, and while this SSD is not the alpha dog in its class, it more than capably gets the job done at a more than reasonable price.
Product Specifications
- SSD series – P3 Plus
- Interface – NVMe (PCIe Gen 4 x4)
- Capacity – 1TB
- Form factor – M.2 (2280)
- Sequential Read – 5000 MB/s
- Sequential Write – 3,600 MB/s
- SSD Endurance (TBW) – 220TB
- Warranty – Limited 5-year
The Crucial P3 Plus 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 2280 SSD was provided for this review.
Visit the Crucial website for ongoing promotions.
Link to purchase P3 Plus: Mwave | Centre Com | Amazon AU | Scorptec
