Crucial’s MX100 made a big impact when it launched in 2014, as it performed brilliantly while also being affordable. A few additions have since been made to its successor, the MX200, which have pushed up the price slightly, as the BX100 now occupies the role of Crucial’s most budget-friendly SSD range. The 128GB capacity has been dropped and a 1TB version added. It uses the same Marvell 88SS9189 controller and 16nm Micron MLC NAND as before, though, and retains most of the extra features such as hardware-accelerated AES 256-bit hardware encryption.
Quoted endurance is up drastically too, from 72TB of writes over five years, to 80TB for the 250GB model, 160TB for the 500GB and 320TB for the 1TB MX200, but Crucial is still only offering a three-year warranty, considerably less than SanDisk and Samsung’s ten years on the 850 Pro and SanDisk Extreme Pro. The MX200 is also available in mSATA, 2260 (60mm) and 2280 (80mm) M.2 variants, although the 1TB capacity is only offered in the traditional 2.5in SATA version.
While the MX200 isn’t quite the bargain of its predecessor, the larger capacities still offer reasonable value for money, working out at 35p and 36p per gigabyte on the 500GB and 1TB drives. You’re getting much better professional-level performance from these two larger drives too, with IOPS results from the Iometer test only beaten by Samsung’s pricier 850 Pro and Plextor’s 512GB M6 Pro.
The MX200 does similarly well in both AS SSD and CrystalDiskMark’s 4K random write tests, topping every other SSD model except Samsung’s, a superb result for an SSD that offers good value for money. It notably drops off considerably in the read tests though – the 1TB MX200 was close to the bottom of the pack in the 32-queue-depth test, with just 271.3 MB/sec compared to the 1TB Samsung 850 Pro’s 409.4 MB/sec.
In PCMark 8’s traces of real-world applications, the MX200 is by no means the fastest SSD we’ve seen though. All three capacities are between one and two seconds slower in the Battlefield 3 trace load times than the Samsung 850 EVO models, sitting near the bottom of the table.
As we’ve stressed before, though, these differences are relatively slim, and are unlikely to be particularly noticeable in real-world use. The MX200 again scores towards the bottom in the Microsoft Word test, but the difference is just 0.3 seconds, so nothing to worry about. In BootRacer, once again the 1TB drive took the longest to load Windows at 12.02 seconds, but the 250B model edges ahead, taking 11.08 seconds, even beating the Samsung SSD 850 Pro 250GB.
Conclusion
If you want an affordable drive, Crucial’s BX100 is a slightly better buy, offering great performance at a lower price than the MX200. Meanwhile, if you want a mid-range drive with more features, the Samsung 850 EVO eclipses the MX200, leaving the latter in a tight spot. The MX200 has more features than the BX100, such as hardware encryption, but these features aren’t needed by most consumer desktop users, and aren’t a reason for a recommendation alone. The MX200 range won’t disappoint, but you can get a slightly better balance of performance and value for money elsewhere.
VERDICT
Decent speed and a solid feature set, but you can get a slightly better balance of performance and value elsewhere.
CRUCIAL MX200 250GB
OVERALL SCORE 86
CRUCIAL MX200 500GB
OVERALL SCORE 89
CRUCIAL MX200 1TB
OVERALL SCORE 89
