What is the Crucial BX100 250GB?
We’ve previously touted Crucial’s MX-series SSDs as tempting budget options, but the firm has lowered the barrier to entry even further with the BX100. This new affordable offering is available in 120GB - 1TB sizes, with the 256GB sample we’ve reviewed here costing £80.
That’s a tempting price, but it’s only ten pounds cheaper than the impressive MX200 – and it’s the same price as the older MX100. It’s also got competition from SanDisk’s Ultra II and the OCZ Arc, which both cost £80 for 240GB drives.
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Crucial BX100 250GB - Design
The BX100 veers away from the Marvell-based hardware we’ve seen in previous Crucial drives. Instead, Crucial deploys a Silicon Motion SM2246EN controller, which is the first time we’ve seen this chip inside an SSD. It’s an interesting bit of kit: only single-core in contrast to the triple-core designs used by Samsung in its drives.
The single-core design allows power consumption to be reduced, which can reduce heat and contribute to better battery life in laptops.
The new controller is paired with familiar memory. Micron-made NAND appears here – no surprise since Micron owns Crucial – and it’s the same 16nm stuff found inside the MX100 and MX200 drives.
The BX100 ticks the basic specification boxes with support for SMART and TRIM, but it’s missing a couple of more luxurious features. There’s no sign of the dynamic SLC caching that debuted in the impressive MX200, and there’s no encryption either.
The endurance rating is mediocre, too. The 250GB model we’ve reviewed is slated for 72TB of use, which matches the older MX100 but is 8TB behind the revised rating in the MX200.