Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Crucial’s new BX200 sounded like a good follow-up to the solid-as-a-rock BX100. But actual review testing reveals some serious shortcomings. Tom’s Hardware Guide tested the BX200 and found reasonable read performance but impaired latency and sustained write performance that drops below even an old-style mechanical HDD. They point out the BX200 “goes down as one of the most disappointing SSDs introduced since 2008, when early JMicron DRAM-less controllers suffered the stutter fiasco.” Anandtech tested the BX200 with similar results and highlights another problem with high power consumption in some idle modes (20x higher than the previous BX100 model) that would hamper use in laptop computer. Their summary: “to bring down drive prices, it's easy to understand why Crucial wanted to release a TLC drive in the BX series. But it's hard to understand why they're releasing it in what seems to be such a poor performing state.” In summary the new BX200 seems like an odd duck - a new cheaper to produce TLC NAND drive with better read performance than traditional HDDs but overall performance well short of current mainstream SSDs such as Samsung’s 850 Evo or even Crucial’s own MX200. If the BX200 cost 30% less than mainstream SSDs that makes sense, but at nearly the same price it’s a questionable value. Due to these issues I was able to switch my Amazon order from the BX200 and get one of the previous BX100 drives based on Micron’s excellent 16nm MLC NAND technology before they disappeared. Amazon has lots of excellent SSD options around the same price so compare before you buy the BX200. UPDATE: Crucial has now replaced the BX200 with a newer MX300 which features both a lower cost per GB and better performance. With that reassuring news the BX200 appears to have been a temporary glitch in the otherwise excellent line of Crucial SSD drives.