Crucial P2 500 GB NVMe M2 SSD review - Specifications & Features

Specifications & Features

Crucial is offering two versions of the SSD (250GB and 500GB). For endurance, our tested 500 GB model has been rated at 150 TBW. The series will be fitted with TLC written 3D NAND flash memory (vertically stacked at 96 layers). NAND flash memory (the storage memory used inside an SSD) has become cheaper thanks to the new 64/96-layer fabrication and this year we noticed a move to QLC NAND as well. MLC writes 2 bits per cell, TLC 3 bits per cell, and QLC four bits per cell. You can see both the complication and advantage here; you can store more data in the NAND cells, increasing volume sizes. But you can also see a performance hit with an increasing write bottleneck (which you can buffer with SLC cached, DRAM or Host Memory Buffer on NVMe). Endurance is also a factor; there should be less of it however, with modern age wear and care technologies; it still is not an issue. 

Phison PS5013-E13 controller

The SSD is making use of a PS5013-E13 controller from Phison which we do not see that often. It makes use of the NVMe revision 1.3 protocol. As you have been able to notice from the SSD specifications, this controller is working across its four PCIs for read and write operations respectively, over an x4 PCIe Gen 3 lane connection that is. The controller can work with 64GB upwards to 2TB capacities but is more limited in performance. For 4K random read and write operations, the controller can perform up to 295K operations per second (IOPS)reads and 430K writes.  It is compatible with TLC / QLC and 96-layer NAND.