Verdict and Conclusion

This Crucial M4 256GB SSD is, in a word, fantastic.

It flies through all the benchmarks, loads windows NOW, runs nice and cool, has plenty of storage space, and generally rocks.

I was impressed to read the specification sheet and see the read/write speeds there, at the time I assumed that those were the absolute best case scenario speeds that I might just barely see if all went well.  Instead the drive blasted right past them, by almost 100MB/s in the read test!  That's impressive.  The read test still being well over spec with windows installed on the drive might be even more impressive, really.

The drive was very easy to install, nothing difficult at all.  It has mounting holes on both the bottom and the sides so you have plenty of mounting options.  In a perfect world it would come with a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter, but that is asking a lot.

The current prices are in the $370-$380 range, somewhat higher than some similar drives however.

It runs very cool indeed, definitely less heat output than any of the mechanical drives I have used.

The drive slowing down as it gets filled with data is annoying, but the speed to manages even with windows installs is hard to argue with.  This is a factor on the vast majority (if not all) SSDs however and won't be held against this drive much.

It is, of course, dead silent.  No noise whatsoever.  A very refreshing change indeed from the clicking vibrating madness that mechanical drives put out!

All in all, the Crucial M4 256GB SSD has a lot of pros:

• Very fast.
• Runs very cool.
• Runs dead silent.
• Did I mention it is really fast?
• Beats it's listed spec for speed.
• Nice three year warranty.

Nothing being perfect, there are cons too:

• Price is a bit high.
• Slows down somewhat as more data is put on the drive.

All told the Pros heavily outweigh the Cons and I feel that a final score of 9.5/10 is well deserved.

SCORE

9.5/10

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