Verdict and Conclusion
I was excited to test something new and different (for me, anyway) in the SSD world with this tiny little mSATA drive. What I found has thoroughly impressed me, Crucial has somehow managed to cram full sizes SSD speeds and capacity into a drive smaller than the average potato chip. How they managed that I have no idea, but they did.
Installation of the drive is quite simple, not overly different from a stick of RAM or small video card. Certainly nothing to be afraid of, despite the looks. If you’re installing it in a notebook it may be a different story, that really depends on your notebook.
The current price of ~$210 is right in the ballpark for a 256GB drive. There are faster 240GB drives available for ~$20 more, so it comes down to a choice between speed and that last bit of capacity and a lower price. I’ll call the price decent.
Speaking of the performance, it’s quite good. I’d really like to test it on a mSATA3 motherboard, but doing a bit of research around and about I’ve found that it actually caps out SATA3 speeds too! That means high 500s. Very impressive.
Installing windows does drop the small file size speeds, but it maintains the larger file size speeds nicely. The write speed hangs out in the 260-270MB/s area while SandForce based drives do closer to 500 with compressible data. With incompressible data the SF drives don’t do nearly as well, while the M4 keeps cruising right along at the same speed.
The small size and mSATA connection make it perfect for really small HTPCs, Ultrabooks, whatever we’re calling small notebooks that aren’t ultrabooks, or simply to reduce cable clutter in your PC by installing this on your motherboard instead of a drive in an adaptor in a slot with power/SATA cables.
When you get down to it there are a number of pros:
- Big capacity in a small size.
- Good speed in a small size.
- Decent price for the above.
The cons list is really quite short:
- Price seems a bit high given the SF based SSDs only slightly more expensive.
All told this is an impressive drive. I give the Crucial M4 mSATA 256GB drive a 9.4/10, I strongly recommend considering this drive if you’re looking for a big mSATA SSD with good performance at a low price.
SCORE
9.4/10
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