Crucial M4 128GB review

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Verdict:

A middling performer that’s made into a tempting buy thanks to an extremely low price and good value throughout

Review Date: 16 Jun 2012

Price when reviewed: £88

Buy it now for: £87
(see more store prices)

Supplier: http://www.amazon.co.uk

Reviewed By: Mike Jennings

Our Rating 4 stars out of 5

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Crucial has been selling SSDs to consumers for longer than almost anyone, and it's evidently got the art of producing good-value drives finely honed. The 128GB version of its M4 drive costs just £83, which works out at a low 64p per gigabyte.

The M4’s design breaks free of the status quo. Instead of the standard SandForce controller, the M4 uses the Marvell 88SS9174, which is the same controller that powers our Ultimate-award-winning Corsair Performance Series Pro.

That controller isn’t partnered with the advanced Toggle Mode NAND of the Corsair, though, which meant it didn’t perform as well in our benchmarks. The M4's 277.5MB/s score in our large-file write test is slower than the Corsair, although its large-file read result of 378.4MB/s is quicker. That’s fine pace, but not outstanding.

Sadly, the M4 proved to be a mediocre performer in the small file benchmarks. A score of 80.8MB/s in the small-file write test is slower than some current drives, such as the Corsair Performance Pro and the OCZ Vertex 4. It read small files at 60.6MB/s, which is marginally better, but still behind a quintet of other drives.

Unfortunately, no accessories are included in the box, but its five-year warranty is twenty-four months more than a lot of SSDs provide.

The chief attraction here is value. At 64p per gigabyte it's a great budget performer. It isn’t able to match the performance of the best drives, but as a budget choice the Crucial M4 is the drive to buy.

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