Crucial BX300 240GB and 480GB SSD Review – Budget SSD Made Faster

Pricing and Availability

The Crucial BX300 SSD series are now available in US and UK. It comes with a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $150 for the 480GB capacity, $90 for the 240GB and $60 for the 120GB capacity. All capacities come with a limited 3 year warranty from Crucial. SSD prices constantly changes from time to time, primarily due to NAND availability, demand and competition. Be sure to check out the links below for their latest pricing and availability.

Crucial BX300 240GB and 480GB SSD Review: Conclusion

You have seen the numbers and the results on the previous pages, and honestly I am quite impressed with the results. I don’t expect the Crucial BX300 SSD Series to be on top in terms of performance, because these aren’t “high performance / flagship” SSDs. They are entry-level SSDs. But for an “entry-level” SSD, they perform quite well, in fact very well. They are able to keep their spot somewhere in the middle and near top-tier SSDs. It’s definitely not a solid win in terms of performance, but it’s a solid win in terms of value or cost / performance. I don’t know if Crucial will be releasing an M.2 SATA version of the BX300 or if they’ll release 1TB or 2TB capacities. Probably yes, probably not; but it would be great if they would release higher capacities in the near future.

For those who are still new to SSDs or who haven’t made the switch yet from hard disk drive (HDD) to SSD; Crucial is offering great value with their new BX300 series and it’s relatively affordable compared to other brands. There might be some brands cheaper than the Crucial BX300, but I think Crucial has the advantage since they are using 3D NAND chips and with DDR3 DRAM (not DRAM-less). If you have a laptop or PC with a SATA 3 compatible connection, you would experience a significant jump in terms of performance specially if coming from a hard drive. Crucial includes a migration software; but if you are going to migrate an OS drive I recommend that you back up your data and do a fresh install of Windows instead. This ensures that the system is clean and the operating system itself isn’t causing any slowdowns or lag to the system.

Also, there are a few things you need to know specially if this will be your first time in getting an SSD or switching from an HDD to SSD. SSD capacities are usually smaller compared to HDDs. But they are significantly faster and can handle random read/write better compared to an HDD. Once you have experienced the performance of an SSD, I’m quite certain that you won’t use an HDD for your OS drive anymore. They are also (very) power efficient compared to a hard disk drive; making it an ideal use for laptops or notebooks. However, they are expensive in terms on price/capacity compared to a HDD, but that’s how SSDs are priced (due to the components and technology used). The good news is Crucial’s BX300 SSD series are priced competitively without sacrificing performance and the quality of the components used.

The SSD market is (very) congested and the competition is intense. There are even companies selling (very) cheap or unbelievably low-priced SSDs; however at the expense of quality and performance, most of the time. On the other hand, Samsung remains on top specially in terms of performance, albeit at a greater cost. However, Crucial targets consumers who simply want to upgrade from an HDD to an SSD but are on a limited budget. With their new SSD series, Crucial is able to offer good value, quality and with the performance that you would expect from a solid state drive. And I think they have done a pretty good job with this new BX300 SSD series.