Overall and Final Verdict
Crucial has always come across to me as a company doing their best to offer fast but maybe not the fastest options while still keeping them priced well. Having full control over their components by being part of Micron which makes the NAND, DRAM, and controller helps a lot with that and helps them stand out. Straddling the line between performance and value is a hard one but they almost always hit the mark. The new Crucial P5 Plus however doesn’t miss the mark when it comes to performance. This is their first PCIe 4.0 drive and it shows a big jump in performance over the original P5 that the P5 Plus name doesn’t fully convey. This is a completely new monster. Now my initial test looking at the sequential performance was a little lower than I expected while still being fast. But going past that almost every test had the P5 Plus up at the top of our charts or near it. In some cases like the AS SSD file transfer test, it was WAY ahead of everything else. It even handled the queue depth testing very well and that is normally a test that brings every drive to its knees once the queue depth gets high enough.
Even the real-world file transfer tests were a surprise. The P5 Plus was significantly faster than anything else I’ve tested when it came to the small file sizes of transferring word documents as well as the medium size of photos. But then the P5 Plus was slower than other 4.0 drives with the big movie files (while still being fast). I also like that Crucial kept the blacked-out look with the black stickers and black PCB, it isn’t a huge deal now that most motherboards hide the M.2 drives. But when the drive isn’t hidden I like that it will blend in well. The only real issue I ran into was the problems I had with the P5 Plus with Asus software that would cause blue screens, a similar issue to one I had with the first P5 that popped up after the P5 launch. Most people won’t run into that if the original P5 is any indication. It seems to be with just a few boards and only if you are using Aura Sync, but if you do have blue screen issues that is where I would look.
Now, of course, the pricing is the big question, right? The Crucial P5 Plus is fast but normally Crucial is straddling the line between fast and price. Did they raise the price with this drive performing so well? Our 1TB sample has an MSRP of $179.99. This is spot on right with the sale price of the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus at 1TB and cheaper than drives like the Samsung 980 Pro and the WD SN850. So the P5 Plus ends up being a great value and is priced down with drives that it is much faster than. If you are looking for a fast PCIe 4.0 drive this is one I would recommend. Being a good value and a solid performer, especially in real-world file transfers.
Live Pricing: HERE
