The Crucial P2 500GB is not the kind of SSD we were expecting. You would think that this budget drive would follow in the footsteps of the P1, a quad-level cell (QLC) SSD released in late 2018. But not so, the Crucial P2 500GB is a triple level cell (TLC) drive.

The advantages of a TLC drive are twofold. First, they offer higher performance than QLC drives, typically delivering higher read/write speeds. Second, they can offer higher endurance ratings and longer warranties, allowing data to be safely stored through longer and more write cycles.

However, these advantages depend on one key thing, and that is on-board DRAM. This is what the P2 lacks and why Crucial was able to offer this drive for the same price per dollar as slower, less reliable QLC SSDs.

DRAM-less SSDs must either rely on NAND flash to find the information requested by the host or use the NVMe protocol to occupy little space on the host DRAM (HMB). Combined with slower NAND, this can lead to a heavy reliance on variable SLC cache to maintain write speeds to specification, which can make performance quite unstable depending on workload, data type, and size.

Peeling off the thin sticker on P2, we find four TLC 3D NAND flash chips of 1Tb each, with a total capacity of 500GB. They are paired with a third-party Phison PS5013-E13T controller, which does not have DRAM but can deliver PCIe Gen3 x4 speeds; the P2 is capped at 2,300MB/s sequential read and 940MB/s sequential write.

Surprisingly, the write speeds Crucial quoted are considerably lower than the speeds I experienced during testing; the AS SSD recorded a sequential write speed of 1,670MB/sec, which seems to me like Crucial itself is significantly underestimating the P2's potential. It seems to me that Crucial itself is underestimating the P2's potential quite a bit.

However, there may be an explanation for this; Crucial has told me that they want to retain the ability to step down the P2 to QLC NAND flash and offer the possibility of split manufacturing both TLC and QLC flash. This helps explain why Crucial's write speeds are much lower than the speeds we are experiencing.

"You may have noticed some variation in endurance between your results and our published specifications, as our specifications are set with future product migration in mind. Crucial P2 SSDs currently rely on Micron TLC 3D NAND technology, but in the future we may mix Micron's TLC NAND technology with QLC NAND technology. By mixing different types of NAND with different capacities, we can tailor and make product decisions based on new and changing technologies, preferred capacities, and flexibility to match overall market dynamics."

Now that we have found the missing piece of the P2 puzzle, let's look at the numbers.

As far as the best-case scenario of the ATTO test is concerned, the P2 scored 3,011 MB/s read and 3,090 MB/s write, much higher than expected. However, these high scores were not demonstrated when faced with the AS SSD's uncompressible data, as the drive was able to write at only 2,037 MB/s and 1,670 MB/s. The P2 also held its own in the random 4K test, recording 56 MB/s read and 142 MB/s write /sec

, and the P2 has been the only other P2 to achieve this.

Where the P2 struggles to maintain performance is when the PCMark 10 storage benchmark is introduced. Presumably because the 204GB of data required to run this test is broken up into various tasks that mimic the real world, P2 struggles to keep up with the levels set by the aforementioned synthetic test. In our quick (23GB) storage test, the P2 recorded an index score of 1,475, slightly behind the other TLC SSDs we tested. On the other hand, in the full (204GB) test, the Index score was even lower at 967. Bandwidth was only 157, less than half that of other SSDs we have tested. 11MB/sec and average access times have doubled to 176μsec.

Crucial P2 performance seems to be mixed, and we would expect nothing less from a DRAM-less drive. However, we wouldn't expect a potential QLC variant to do so well overall, making it especially difficult to recommend this SSD unless you can peel back the sticker and look under the hood to see which of the two NAND flashes is on board.

For this reason and the 150TBW endurance rating, we recommend looking elsewhere for a cheap 500GB drive, especially if you plan to use it for an OS; the Crucial P2 is snappier than the HDD and, at $65 (£62), is very cheap, but it is one of the best SSDs for gaming and performance You don't need more money to get an SSD with fewer asterisks regarding.