Professional’s Ranking
Professionals
- Glorious PCIe 4.0 efficiency
- Very inexpensive for an NVMe SSD with DRAM
- As much as 2TB of capability
- Obtainable with low-profile heatsink
Cons
- Very gradual when secondary cache runs out
- Common TBW score
Our Verdict
The T500 is likely one of the quickest PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs I’ve examined. It’s inexpensive for its ilk and obtainable with a low-profile heatsink for an additional $10/£10.
Essential is at it once more, delivering a PCIe 4 NVMe SSD with wonderful efficiency at an inexpensive value level. After all, it’s not the equal of the PCIe 5.0 T700, however it’s extremely aggressive with the very best of the PCIe 4.0 SSDs that I’ve examined.
You can too learn our Essential T700 evaluation.
Design & Options
The T500 is a PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2, 2280 (22mm vast, 80mm lengthy) NVMe SSD using a Phison PS5025-E25 controller and 232-layer Micron TLC (Triple-Stage Cell) NAND. It additionally employs 1GB of DRAM per terabyte of capability for major caching duties.
We’ve seen numerous good-performing HMB (Host Reminiscence Buffer) SSDs not too long ago, however they’ll’t match DRAM cache for the quickest random entry and 4K efficiency. Translation: DRAM makes your working system livelier.
Essential warranties the drive in opposition to failure for 5 years, or 600TBW (terabytes that may be written) per terabyte of capability. That’s, the drive lets you write as much as 600 terabytes for each 1TB of NAND with none drop in capability, or going into read-only mode as a consequence of cells carrying out.
Because of the onboard DRAM and its fast random efficiency, it is a nice drive to run your working system off of.
Efficiency
Brief reply: The Essential T500 may be very quick. It didn’t fairly match the superb Solidigm P44 Professional total, however it wasn’t far behind and bested that rival in a number of particular person assessments.
Notice that the Solidigm P44 Professional and Kingston Fury Renegade are each PCIe 4.0 SSDs with DRAM cache. The Lexar NM790 proven on the charts beneath is the quickest of the host reminiscence buffer (HMB) drives I’ve examined.
The T500 carried via its wonderful CrystalDiskMark 8 efficiency within the 4K assessments.
The T500 did fairly properly with our real-world 48GB transfers (proven beneath), solely really falling off the tempo of the Solidigm and Lexar NM970 in writing the 48GB group of smaller recordsdata and folders.
The T500 truly set a brand new document (even besting PCIe 5.0 sorts) in our 450GB write; nevertheless, that’s to not say the drive is the very best we’ve seen at sustained writes. Writing one other 500GB to the drive exhausted its secondary cache and the pace dropped to lower than 150MBps solely about 100MB into the method.
After a while off, the drive recovered properly, and regardless of having solely round 200MB of capability left on the 2TB drive, it wrote one other 48GB at over 3GBps. Put one other means, you possibly can’t write greater than 600MB earlier than write speeds drop, however the drive will nonetheless carry out properly even when practically full. Clearly, the slowdown will happen sooner on the 1TB mannequin.
Worth & Availability
The T500 is on the market in 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB capacities for $90, $120, and $170, respectively. That’s with a easy warmth spreader. A bigger, low-profile heatsink is on the market with the 1TB and 2TB fashions, which raises these costs $10, to $130 and $180.
Within the UK it prices £87.59, £116.39 and £165.59 for a similar capacities with out a heatsink. Including one pushes the fee to £125.99 and £175.19 with it not obtainable for the 500GB.
You should purchase the T500 from Essential in addition to retailers comparable to Amazon, Box and Ebuyer.
Take a look at our chart of the very best SSDs for extra choices.
Do you have to purchase the Essential T500?
If you’d like wonderful PCIe 4.0 efficiency at value, the T500 must be in your tire-kicking checklist. And because of the onboard DRAM and its fast random efficiency, it’s additionally an important drive to run your working system off of.
This evaluation initially appeared on PCWorld.
How we take a look at
Inside drive assessments presently make the most of Home windows 11, 64-bit working on an X790 (PCIe 4.0/5.0) motherboard/i5-12400 CPU combo with two Kingston Fury 32GB DDR5 4800MHz modules (64GB of reminiscence whole). Each 20Gbps USB and Thunderbolt 4 are built-in to the again panel and Intel CPU/GPU graphics are used. The 48GB switch assessments make the most of an ImDisk RAM disk taking on 58GB of the 64GB of whole reminiscence. The 450GB file is transferred from a Samsung 990 Professional 2TB which additionally runs the OS.
Every take a look at is carried out on a newly formatted and TRIM’d drive so the outcomes are optimum. Notice that in regular use, as a drive fills up, efficiency will lower as a consequence of much less NAND for secondary caching, in addition to different elements.
Caveat: The efficiency numbers proven apply solely to the drive we have been shipped and to the capability examined. SSD efficiency can and can range by capability as a consequence of extra or fewer chips to shotgun reads/writes throughout and the quantity of NAND obtainable for secondary caching. Distributors additionally sometimes swap elements. Should you ever discover a big discrepancy between the efficiency you expertise and that which we report, by all means, tell us.