Crucial adds a capacious 2TB model to its budget-oriented BX500 SSD line

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Bulk storage doesn't have to be a mechanical hard drive.

(Image credit: Crucial)

Mechanical hard drives still offer more capacity for the money, but it comes at the expense of speed and performance. They're also more delicate due to having moving parts, though NAND flash cells wear out of time/use, so there's a different debate to be had there. As it relates to capacity, though, bigger SSDs exist and they don't necessarily cost a king's ransom. Case in point, Crucial (a division of Micron) has added a 2TB model to its BX500 SSD series.

Crucial introduced the BX500 line a year ago as a relatively affordable family of drives, with the explicit pitch of it being "time for computer users to make the transition from hard drives to solid state storage."

"SSD technology is becoming more mainstream than ever, and for those who are ready to make the switch to solid state, the Crucial BX500 offers performance and reliability at a competitive price from a brand consumers have grown to trust," Teresa Kelley, vice president and general manager of Micron's consumer products group said at the time.

Marketing aside, the newly introduced 2TB BX500 SSD is offered in the 2.5-inch form factor with a SATA 6Gbps interface. While not listed, it presumably pairs the same SM2258XT four-channel SSD controller with Micron's 64-layer 3D triple-level cell (TLC) NAND flash memory chips.

What is listed are the performance ratings—Crucial says the 2TB model offers sequential read and write speeds of up to 540MB/s and 500MB/s, respectively.

Pricing at the outset is $214.99 for the 2TB model. That's roughly on par with other 2TB SSDs on the market, though it's not the absolute cheapest. Crucial's own MX500 in 2TB form, for example, is on sale at Newegg for $199 (we list the 1TB model as the one of the best SSDs for gaming).

Still, it's one of the least expensive 2TB SSDs around. It's also possible that street pricing could end up lower as it becomes more widely available, but we'll have to wait and see.

Paul Lilly
Paul Lilly

Paul has been playing PC games and raking his knuckles on computer hardware since the Commodore 64. He does not have any tattoos, but thinks it would be cool to get one that reads LOAD"*",8,1. In his off time, he rides motorcycles and wrestles alligators (only one of those is true).