At the CES 2013 conference earlier this year Crucial announced the successor to its popular m4 series of SSDs. The new M500 series uses the new Marvell 88SS1987 controller and Micron 20nm MLC flash memory. We had to wait a few months, but now the new M500 is finally available.

The Crucial M500 (and the OEM-tailored Micron M500 ) are a new mainstream SSD family that offers a SATA 6Gb/s interface, Marvell controller, 7mm drive height and Micron's latest 20nm MLC NAND.

Highest capacity of any mainstream consumer SSD; Very attractive pricing; sub $600 for 960GB; Excellent performance/cost ratio

Corsair Neutron GTX; Intel SSD 520; Samsung SSD 840 Pro; Plextor PX-M5S; Crucial m4; OCZ Vector; Highest capacity of any mainstream consumer SSD; Very attractive pricing; sub $600 for 960GB; Excellent performance/cost ratio; Weaker performance than other mainstream SSDs

Crucial M500 Solid State Drive Review Micron Technology updates their product family with the new Crucial M500 solid state drive, which arrives in capacities ranging from 120GB-960GB for 2.5" SATA, mSATA, and M.2/NGFF form factors.

Very fast 539/445 MBps read/write speed with ATTO; TCG Opal 2.0 security with 256-bit AES hardware encryption; Marvell 88SS9187 controller supports TRIM; NCQ; and Windows 8 drive telemetry; 3-Year Micron Technology product warranty support; 120/240/480/960GB high-speed SSD storage capacities; Device

Some manufacturers offer five-year warranty; High-end performance only available from 480/960GB versions; Expensive enthusiast-level product

The drive itself comes in a shiny 7mm silver enclosure, so you can jam it into an Ultrabook. A 9.5mm spacer is also included, but there is no 3.5-inch adapter in the box, nor is there any software in the box or online aside from a firmware updating tool, which is disappointing.

Fastest drive in its class by a hair; great value

Bare-bones bundle; 3 year warranty

The Crucial M500 fundamentally changes the math for SSD performance. It's not so much the drive as the underlying 128Gb NAND chips, which have double the capacity of the flash dies used in most other SSDs.

The M500 Series from Crucial won't win any extreme performance awards but it's certainly fast enough for virtually anyone and the price per usable GB of the 480Gb and 960GB drives is extremely attractive.

But even the blue-hued chip giant must have been somewhat surprised by just how cutthroat this SSD marketplace has become. While SSDs may never quite reach parity with HDDs when it comes to price per gigabyte, they have become sufficiently less expensive to make the combination of a small SDD (for...

The speed of this drive is amazing regardless of the type of file you are working with. It is an easy to set up high quality drive. We did a massive amount of research about SSD drives before purchasing and Crucial drives are the very best. They don't disappoint.

Upgrade for my 2008 MacBook Pro which had mechanical hdd. Very happy with the performance gain. I've read quite a bit about these drives and the 120GB and 240GB are said to have poor write speeds compared to peers. I don't need great writes for my Mac so price was my driver.

Crucial's new M500 SSD is built on an upgraded Marvell flash controller with new 20 nanometer 128 Gbit die MLC flash. This combination makes for a very affordable drive that also provides excellent performance in both synthetic and real-life performance testing.

Great pricing; 7.5 mm thin-Ultrabook compatible; Adapter for 9.5 mm drives included; Supports TRIM; 3-year warranty

Can't find anything wrong