Available in sizes of 64GB, 128GB, 256GB
and 512GB, the Crucial M4 is competitively priced throughout its line, but this
manifests itself most readily at the lower prices. In particular, the 128GB
version allows budget buyers to get more space at a lower cost than almost any
other drive we've reviewed.
Although Crucial's larger M4 drives have
been criticised for slow performance, the 128GB model is comfortably speedy in
terms of real-world performance. It doesn't match up to the best -the Kingston
HyperX 3K is faster - but it's close to being as good, and manages to hold up
while being a much better purchase in price terms as well. It's been a while
since Crucial's drives were the fastest, but they aren't out of the race, even
if they don't quite match up to SandForce-based models.
As we've seen elsewhere in this guide, the
low price isn't everything it seems, however. If you're aiming to put this in a
desktop machine, you'll most likely need to buy a bay converter separately,
which adds some expense onto the price. It's also inconvenient if you don't
notice until you come to install the drive.
That said, its power consumption levels are
rock-bottom, suggesting that it's really aimed at mobile, battery-powered
computing so in some ways you can see why Crucial might not be eager to promote
the desktop suitability of the product.
The one area you can truly say that the
Crucial M4 fails, though, is in offering a substantial upgrade to current
customers. If you already own a Crucial C300, you'll find that the M4 costs
proportionally more while offering no significant performance improvement.
Rather than improving its drives, Crucial shifted its priorities, coming up
with something that performed well for a wider variety of typical uses, rather
than aiming to have the fastest model on the market in theoretical terms.
Still, it performs quite well, and the low
price for 128GB makes it a drive you should definitely look at, especially if
you don't want to spend a lot of money.
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Details
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Price
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$172.78
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Capacity
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128GB
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Read speed
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415MB/S
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Write speed
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175MB/S
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Max power consumption
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0.15W
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Idle power consumption
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0.10W
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