[section_title title=”Introduction & Closer Look”]
Introduction & Closer Look
Brand: Crucial
Model: BX200 (480GB)
UK Price: £99.99 @ Amazon UK (At time of review) – Click here to purchase in UK
US Price: $129.99 @ Amazon US (at time of review) – Click here to purchase in US
Like virtually every method of storage technology and devices themselves, SSD’s come in different sizes, capacities and of course performance levels. Sometimes larger models such as 512GB offer performance advantages over say 128GB drives due to the amount of bandwidth available and of course, quality and quantity of NAND chips which make up the entire storage interface.
Today we have the Crucial BX200 480GB SATAIII SSD on the test bench which is the direct successor to the BX100 500GB model which we reviewed last year; what advancements have Crucial made and have they improved on keys aspects such as performance and value?
Although not a massive feature rich point, the packaging is very subtle with all the information you could possibly need to know; other than reading this review of course! Crucial have their own blue and silver theme for SSDs and the BX200 is no different in this regard.
Inside the small cardboard box, we have the BX200 480GB SSD itself, a 2.5” spacer which is handy for those wanting to install this drive into a laptop/notebook and a free code for Acronis True Image HD; the 2.5” spacer is great as not all SSDs fit snug inside a laptop storage wise and this removes any issues of loose drives.
Here we have the small 2.5” 480GB Crucial BX200 solid state drive in all of its glory and as you can see, it is a stylish little thing. It features a SATAIII interface with up to 6GB/s of bandwidth being allowed; this of course depends on your motherboards specifications, but all new Intel/AMD motherboards now feature SATA III as standard.
On the bottom panel of the BX200, we have an information sticker which contains relevant information such as the serial number, the model number, the capacity, the part number and of course all those exciting informative safety icons that no-one really knows anything about… If it works and does the job properly, that’s all we care about!
To connect this up to your system or laptop/notebook, you will need a SATA connector/cable (not included) and of course a SATA power cable free to use this particular drive; or any model of SATA based storage device in all honesty!
Let’s take a look at the specifications and then see how the BX200 480GB drive from Crucial performs against the BX100 and of course, other brands/models of SSD…
What is the different between this One and all the other SSD.
I mean what is special about it?
Micron (Crucial) produce their own memory, only use the most reliable memory controllers such as Marvell and their performance levels are generally consistent performers; even among their budget range