As a general rule of thumb, I try to avoid buying SSDs at full price. However, Crucial's new P2 500GB SSD comes at such an attractive price point that some buyers will skip the sale shopping.

The 500GB model (CT500P2SSD8) is one of two capacities that currently make up the P2 series and is priced at $64.99 on Crucial's website and Newegg; a 250GB model (CT250P2SSD8) is also available for $54.99

250GB.

While the 250GB price is reasonable given the specs, the 500GB is a better value and is particularly interesting: on Newegg, all other 500GB SSDs at the same price (or slightly cheaper) have a SATA 6Gbps interface, and most of them are 2.5-inch form form-factor drives.

In contrast, P2 drives are built around the M.2 form factor and take advantage of the NVMe interface for higher speeds. Here is what they offer:

PCI Express 3.0 models, and even the latest PCIe 4.0 SSDs, which boast speeds in excess of 5,000 MB/sec, are not the fastest NVMe drives on the market. However, these read speeds are about four times faster than typical SATA SSDs.

To put the price of the 500GB model into perspective, Crucial's MX500 500GB SSD in M.2 form (SATA 6Gbps) sells for $69.99 on their website and $70.99 on Newegg. In other words, Crucial has undercut its own pricing as well as the competition by releasing a faster SSD at a lower price.

It is not clear what type of NAND flash memory chips Crucial is using in the P2 series; the P1 line (which we consider one of the best NVMe SSDs) uses Micron's 64 layer 3D Quad Level Cell (QLC) chips combined with Silicon Motion's SM2263 controller, and we assume that the P2 line uses slower QLC NAND chips as well.

Also, no mention was made of the controller for this new line; the P1 500GB is rated to offer up to 1,900 MB/s random read (versus 2,300 MB/s) and 950 MB/s random write (versus 940 MB/s).

Assuming these drives don't spit up a hairball during our testing of the best SSD for gaming guide (none of us have actually used these drives), the only real complaint I have is the lack of capacity options. Crucial has the same aggressive pricing strategy and offer more than 1TB capacity.