Crucial P310 SSD review: More speed for M.2 2230

The Crucial P310 joins the ranks of M.2 2230 SSDs, which have powered an explosion of mobile gaming and computing systems in recent years. Now’s the time for true high-performance M.2 2230 SSDs, and Crucial intends to lead the way. It already has the fastest consumer SSD on the planet with its T705 and what is probably the best SSD for laptops in the T500 earlier this year, but why stop there? There’s a need for faster 2TB drives in the 2230 form factor, and a good upgrade will last the lifespan of a beloved device. Enter the Crucial P310.

The P310 comes as a bit of a surprise, but a pleasant one. Hot on the heels of the updated Corsair MP600 Mini, which was the fastest SSD in this form factor that we’ve ever tested, comes a QLC-based drive that offers both capacity and performance in one package. Unlike previous alternatives with QLC flash (that’s Quad Level Cell, for four bits per cell), the P310 has fewer tradeoffs and a lot of potential. This makes it a great addition if you’re in the market for an M.2 2230 SSD for your laptop or portable gaming system.

Its power efficiency and battery life are both pretty good. Does sustained performance take the predictable nosedive? Yes, but it’s not nearly as bad as with past attempts. Does it have any big downsides? Maybe its price tag, but we expect this one will end up a hot seller in due time once street prices correct. There’s a lot of good here, and we’re excited about any advancements for drives in this form factor. This is also the first time we’re working with Micron’s newest QLC flash, so let’s dive into it.

Crucial P310 Specifications

The Crucial P310 is available in 1TB and 2TB capacities with a respective MSRP of $114.99 and $214.99. These prices are potentially a little bit on the high side as you can get a drive with TLC flash at 1TB for less than $100 and QLC flash at 2TB for as little as $140. Probably the best comparison would be at 2TB, the most desirable capacity these days, against other drives with an equivalent controller. That would be the Corsair MP600 Mini (E27T) that has TLC flash and, at the time of this review, is available for $229.99. This suggests Crucial will probably sell this for below MSRP before long.

Performance on the P310 looks good as it can reach up to 7,100 / 6,000 MB/s for sequential reads and writes at either capacity. The drive can also reach up to 1,000K / 1,200K random read and write IOPS at both capacities, which would have been unthinkable for a DRAM-less drive a couple of years back.

The five year warranty allows for 220TB of writes per TB of capacity, which is very much on the low side compared to modern TLC offerings but within the expected range for QLC flash at 0.12 drive writes per day. This might be a dealbreaker for some, but we think it’s sufficient for the intended use — you’d have to uninstall and install a lot of games over five years to come anywhere near that level of writes.

 Crucial P310 Software and Accessories

Crucial offers two primary downloads for SSDs on its website: True Image for Crucial and the Crucial Storage Executive. The former is an OEM tool useful for cloning, imaging, and backing up data for drive migration. The latter is Crucial’s SSD toolbox that shows drive health, enables firmware updates, and contains useful features for drive maintenance and operation. This is better than what you get with OEM drives but is not necessarily a selling point on its own.

Of course if you’re planning to use this purely in a Steam Deck, neither tool is particularly useful unless you also plan to run Windows on the device. You could potentially clone your existing SSD using a desktop PC, but firmware updates aren’t available via Linux.

 Crucial P310 : A Closer Look

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The Crucial P310 is a single-sided drive in the M.2 2230 form factor. This makes it particularly useful for portable devices like the Steam Deck, Steam Deck OLED, Asus ROG Ally, and more. Crucial specifically lists the MSI Claw, Microsoft Surface, and some Dell laptops as also being compatible, but for the Surface we would recommend it only for the Pro 9 and newer due to issues with PCIe 4.0 drives on earlier Surface models.

The label indicates a potential power draw of up to or over 8.5W, given 3.3V and up to 2.5A, but the peak power state by SMART is set at 6.30W. There should be no problem using this in any of the above devices, or in other laptops and desktops with an appropriate standoff or with an M.2 extender.

The P310 uses Phison’s newer E27T controller, which is DRAM-less but able to use the full bandwidth of the PCIe 4.0 interface. In this way it’s an upgrade to the popular E21T, which tops out at around only 5 GB/s or so. We have discussed the technical details of this controller in previous reviews of drives that utilize it — the Inland TN470, Corsair MP600 Elite, and the M.2 2230 refresh of the MP600 Mini. In brief, it’s a powerful and power-efficient controller that works well in this form factor.

We haven’t heard much about the QLC flash, though. This is Micron’s 232-Layer QLC flash, which has some similarities to YMTC’s 232-Layer QLC flash that we reviewed in the HP FX700. For example, both use a quad-plane design rather than the hexa-plane configuration used with the same-generation TLC flash. We won’t get too much into the technical differences between the two QLC flashes, aside from saying that Micron’s design has smaller blocks and more spare data per page, which together could be better for endurance.

It seems that this new QLC flash is also making its way into other Crucial products, like the P3 Plus, which could be beneficial. This flash currently comes in 1Tb dies, so the promise of higher capacities will have to wait a bit longer.

Crucial also states that the drive has integrated power loss immunity, which is not to be confused with power loss protection. The former protects data-at-rest and the latter data-in-flight. This is not an atypical feature for SSDs as they need a way to cope with sudden power loss. This includes rebuilding mapping metadata that was in the host memory buffer, or HMB feature, for DRAM-less NVMe SSDs. Portable devices are designed to handle power drain gracefully but this type of protection could bring extra peace of mind, considering that a drained battery will usually only involve data-at-rest.

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