Crucial P1 and BX500 SSDs push down the cost of storage

Right now is a great time to buy storage for your PC. Flash memory-based SSDs are dirt cheap at the moment, as the price of NAND continues to drop. So, where does that leave a company like Crucial that wants to introduce a new entry-level SATA SSD, as well as the second consumer 4-bit layered cell (QLC) M.2 drive? Well, it doesn’t have a lot of elbow room to work with, so it’s making some cutthroat choices to ensure it can compete.

Crucial, a subsidiary of memory manufacturer Micron, has just released the BX500 and the P1. The BX 500 is the company’s entry-level SATA SSD that fits in under its MX500 alternative. But with the MX500 already dropping in price, Crucial has dropped the DRAM cache to ensure it can hit a hyper-competitive price point of $80 for 480 GB. The P1, meanwhile, is an M.2 NVME drive that uses QLC NAND. The benefit of QLC is that it can fit more storage into a smaller space. Once again, this pushes down the cost. The 500GB version sells for $110 and includes 512MB of DDR3 DRAM.