Crucial MX300 525GB SSD Review

Only a few months have passed since Crucial released the 750GB Limited Edition variant of the MX300 line (review here) and today it’s also available in 275GB/525GB/1TB/2TB capacities. Now what makes the MX300 line of SSDs special is that it makes use of 32-layer 3D TLC NAND flash that utilizes four planes (quad plane) to communicate with the NAND flash processor and features FortisFlash technology for Dynamic Write Acceleration (through an emulated SLC layer).

The NAND flash controller Crucial used with the MX300 line (and the 525GB variant which we have with us today) is the 4-channel Marvell 88SS1074 which features partial power loss protection, active garbage collection, redundant array of independent NAND (RAIN), LDPC error correction code (ECC), adaptive thermal protection, data-path protection, multistep data integrity algorithm and fully supports DevSleep (power save), TRIM, SMART, AES 256-bit hardware encryption, TCG Opal 2.0 and IEEE-1667 (fully compatible with Microsoft’s eDrive). In terms of endurance Crucial rates the MX300 525GB for up to 160TB TBW (roughly 88GB of writes per day for 5 years), gives it an MTTF of 1.5 million hours and just like with the rest of the line it’s covered by a 3 year limited warranty. Link