Customer Ratings & Reviews

To me, one of the most critical things to look for in an SSD is the name brand. And “Crucial” is one of the few brands that I actually trust with important data. They are owned by Micron, who actually manufacture the memory chips used in this drive. This means that they get the first pick of the best chips that they produce. This drive is marketed for gamers. This is spacious at 2TB, and is really necessary since many games are starting to come in at around the 100GB mark. The drive is also fast. The sequential read speeds are just about as fast as you can get in a PCIe 4 drive. PCIe 5 drives do exist, and they can be significantly faster, but they also cost a lot more, and require that your system has a Gen 5 interface to get that speed. However, drive speeds are reaching the point of diminishing returns for most people, so don’t pay for speed that you don’t need, and this is fast enough for most people. But even if you are rocking an older PCIe 3 port, this drive will still work, but you can’t take advantage of the extra speed because your computer is the bottleneck. Crucial also touts that this drive is more energy efficient, with “up to 40% better performance.” However, I can’t verify this since my laptop is an absolute beast that sucks down power, so for me, the power savings would be a drop in the bucket. Now, this IS a budget drive, so there are a few disadvantages that should be pointed out. The first is that it does not have any DRAM, so it uses HMB. This is the rule for budget drives, and using HMB really does perform almost as fast as having real DRAM, so this isn’t really a problem these days. The other compromise is that this is a QLC (quad level cell) drive, which is to be expected in this price class. This means that four bits of data are stored in every storage cell. This keeps the price low, but it also takes more time to write. There is a dedicated portion of SLC (single level cell) that can be written to very fast, and then later when the drive is idle, the data is moved from SLC to QLC in the background. However, when writing a lot of data at once, the SLC area can become filled and then data has to be written directly to the QLC area, which is much slower. The result is that small amounts of writing spread out over time can be very fast, as long as the drive has a few seconds to “rest” between writes. But a long, sustained write will be much slower. This is normal for all drives in the “budget” category, and the typical desktop user or gamer will likely not even notice this unless they are copying a LOT of data from one drive to another. The final “disadvantage” is that, because the drive uses QLC, it does not have the endurance of more expensive drives. Whenever you write to a memory cell, it starts to “wear out,” and this drive is “only” rated to 440 TBW (TB written), but this is still more than many other QLC drives offer. To put this in perspective, this is far more data than the typical home user or gamer could write in a decade. But some users, such as content creators who are editing huge video files, might conceivably hit the wear limit, and those people should search for a drive with a higher endurance. So, to summarize, for most users, this drive would be an excellent choice with a great combination of speed and size in an attractively priced package.

If you have never used an SSD drive in your PC, you are in for a treat. Crucial just released the P310 2TB PCIe Gen4 2280 NVMe M.2 SSD. As noted by the term “Gen4” in the description, the P310 uses the PCIe 4.0 (Fourth generation) interface. Gen4 as I understand enables fast read and write speeds up to ,450 MB/s and 6,900 MB/s respectively. The Crucial P310 gets close to those limits with 7,100 MB/S read speeds and 6,000 MB/s write speeds. Note that some of the latest PCs currently use a Gen5 PCIe interface, which has data transfers speeds at double what Gen4 can provide, but those SSDs come at a much higher cost and require a motherboard with a Gen5 PCIe interface. Your motherboard specifications will tell you what generation PCIe interface you have. If you plan to install this in a desktop PC, I highly recommend adding a heatsink to help cool the drive, which can get quite hot in use. Prices for heatsinks generally run in the $10 to $30 range and will only work if you have the room for it. The P310 is single-sided in case that matters when buying a heatsink. Space can be tight on some smaller computer cases. Of course, the P310 SSD without a heatsink is perfect for laptops or gaming devices like PS5. I installed the Crucial P310 as the primary C: drive on my PC and had no trouble cloning the original SSD to the new SSD. If you go to www.crucial.com/support/SSD, you will find all support for the P310 SSD including installation instructions, firmware upgrades (none at the moment), warranty information, etc. There you will also be able to download Acronis True Image for Crucial, which is software that you can use to clone your old drive. Of course, if you just use the P310 SSD for basic hard drive space, all you need to do is simply format the drive using standard Windows drive utilities. Crucial also includes a free download of Storage Executive, which is software used to monitor the drive’s health as well as manage some optional configuration settings to optimize the drive. The Crucial P310 offers impressive transfer speeds and generally compares well with other brand name SSDs on the market. I found it performed on par with the drive I replaced, which is a fast high-end Gen4 SSD. As such, its fast handling of file input/output makes it a good fit for gaming and also for running resource-hungry programs like Adobe Photoshop that benefit from a fast drive. I believe the budget-friendly P310 2TB SSD is a good compromise of price vs. performance. Crucial does sell a slightly faster but more expensive T500 SSD that is also well-suited for gaming and video editing. The P310 comes with a 5-year limited warranty, which also is standard now with most SSD manufacturers. Crucial has a solid reputation of manufacturing reliable and economical PC/laptop SSD drives and memory sticks. My desktop’s memory slots are fully loaded with 64 GB of Crucial RAM and now I will enjoy a new Crucial SSD 2TB drive as well.

Speedy M.2 NVME hard drive from a reliable manufacturer! If you’ve upgraded your memory before, you likely know of Crucial/Micron. They’re one of the top makers of reliable and compatible memory at a fair price and the P310 is no exception. I used this in the second NVME slot of my Gigabyte Windows gaming laptop and was up and running in just a few seconds. It loads games and large files quickly and transfer speeds are blazing. They claim 20% faster speeds than other Gen4 SSDs and according to CrystalDiskMark speed tests that sounds about right. It performed about 40% faster than the stock NVME drive that came with my laptop (6957 MB/s vs 4917 MB/s) but to be fair a completely new and empty drive should perform a bit faster than one that’s already at 68% capacity. A drop to 20% after loading it up sounds fair and is still a vast improvement. In a real world test, it only took 2 minutes to migrate 85 GBs from the stock drive to this one, which is pretty wonderful. In terms of gaming, this drive will mainly help in decreasing loading times but you shouldn’t really notice it much during actual game play. However, if you’re deficient in RAM for what you’re playing and your system needs to frequently refresh from your hard drive to compensate, then this should help smoothen things out. Also if you play large open world games and uncover a new map area that needs to load, you’ll likely appreciate the fast loading speeds. Black Myth: Wukong takes a relatively long time initially loading vs other games, so it’s nice to get it up and running sooner. What it’s especially helpful for is if you work with media and frequently work with large files. 4K videos and photoshoots easily take up gigs of memory and can take a while to just load or transfer. This drive can literally save hours on the day over an old platelet style or even a SATA SSD. I generally like to save projects to the NVME drive while I’m working on them for a faster workflow and then migrate them to a larger platelet style drive for archiving when I’m done. If you’re looking for more hard drive space, faster load times, or are trying to find ways to save time in your media workflow, it’s hard to go wrong with the Crucial P310. It comes with a 5 year warranty, is reasonably priced, and is made by one of the most trusted memory brands around. There really isn’t much else to ask for. PROS - Micron/Crucial build quality - Blazing fast read/write speeds - Decreased loading and start up time - Super fast file migration - Gen4 and gen3 compatible - PS5 compatible - TRIM and SMART support - Reasonably priced - 5 year warranty CONS - None

The reason I picked up this SSD is because of a horrible experience I've been having with a Samsung 990 Evo. To keep it short, the temps of the 990 Evo in my laptop are extremely high, to the point of heavy throttling and instability. So I decided its time to pick up a new one and I'm glad I did. The Crucial P310 has a bit of a confusing name given that was also the name of the SSD they made for the SteamDeck/Ally, but this is the full size 2280 NVME drive. This drive touts full PCI-E 4.0 speeds, with Read/Write speeds up to 7100MBps and uses the latest 3d VNAND from Micron which should help with speed as well as heat. Unforunately at this time, I have no answers as to what type of VNAND this is, be it TLC, QLC, etc (as each behaves differently) or if its DRAMless or not. As far as installation goes, its very straight forward with most NVME drives and this is no exception. Unlike with other drives, I didn't have to go through a complicated driver installation process to get this to work. I simply plugged it in and it was identified with the windows installer. The temps of this drive were impressive coming from my previous drive under a heavy load. This drive not only ran significantly cooler, it didn't throttle in the tests. Now, I wasn't able to reach the full 7100MBps, but I was close enough and given it was going into an older laptop I'm not surprised. Reaching 6.8GBps is close enough, and the other speeds for different queue depths was impressive as well. It performs almost as well as my 990 Pro drive in my other laptop, which is a much more expensive drive. Overall very happy with this drive given its performance and price. Only minor complaints about the drive is the lack of a temp sensor on the controller (which is what burns up on my other drive) and not including the tiny screw needed to secure the drive into computers. I know most computers already have them, but in the off case it doesn't, it would be nice to have the screw included.

I added this drive to my desktop gaming PC to give me 4TB of total space. It’s about 20% faster than the 2TB drive I already had in my gaming machine which was top of the line as of 2 years ago. The drive does not come with a heatsink attached so it can also be installed in laptops. Once installed, it had to be formatted as an NTFS drive in Windows by going to the Disk Management tool. It then showed up as a spare drive and I started installing a lot of Game Pass and Steam games that I no longer had room for on my main drive. Flight Simulator is a huge game! While it is compatible with PS5, this version did not come with a heatsink which would need to be purchased separately before installation. There are not any downsides to this drive. It only has a 440 TBW endurance rating but unless you’re writing terabytes of data to it weekly it will last a long time. I checked my original drive that I’ve been gaming on, and it only has 31TB written in 2 years so this drive will last me well past the five-year warranty period. Pros: - Gen4 NVMe - Up to 7100 MB/s read and 6000 MB/s write. - Easy to install - 5-year warranty Cons: - Not as high of TBW as some other drives Overall – a fast drive for gamers who want to upgrade or add more storage to their laptops or desktops.

Very impressed with this m.2 drive. I’m using this as an upgrade to the 1TB drive that came with my desktop pc. That drive was fast as most m.2 drives will be. But as with most things in the computer world a lot can change in a years time. On the surface nothing stands out really from other drives. Let’s face it, it will be inside your computer so how it looks means nothing. As for the build, it does feel well made and doesn’t get unusually hot. What really matters is speed and quality. In terms of quality only time will tell but I have no reason to think it will be anything other than top notch. As for speed, I am impressed. I did a clone of my original drive and ran benchmarks before I removed it. Then I ran benchmarks on this new drive after installing it. My read speeds went from about 3900MB to 6950MB. Write speeds went from 3875MB to 6270MB. Very impressive number gains. Now will you notice these improvements, yes but it won’t be a night and day difference. Most drives these days are plenty fast. However, if you are looking for an upgrade or you are building a new system, I think this is an excellent choice that should last a long time. Highly recommended!

The P310 boasts sequential read/write speeds of up to 7,100/6,000 MB/s, which is blazing fast for a Gen4 drive, especially one this small. In real-world use, this translates to lightning-fast boot times, rapid game loading, and snappy overall system responsiveness. As far as power efficiency goes the crucial P310 has a power to performance ratio 40% better than previous Crucial Gen. 4 SSDs. The P310 is also up to 20 times faster than SATA SSDs. The SSD is also easy to install and offers more space for Gen. 4 laptops and desktop files along with the PlayStation five and again is Gen. 3 backwards compatible. The Crucial P310 Gen4 NVMe SSD (2TB) is a remarkable drive that pushes the boundaries of what is possible in the M.2 2230 form factor. Its combination of high performance, massive capacity, and power efficiency makes it an ideal choice for handheld gamers and anyone who needs a compact yet spacious drive. This SSD was a HUGE upgrade to my gaming machine, and the performance gain was immediately noticeable when transferring over my data from my old hard drive to the P310 2TB. I am extremely happy with this upgrade!

Crucial has always been a reliable, affordable alternate to SSDs and the P310 is no exception. With fast PCIe Gen 4 speeds, solid 2TB storage, and dependable build quality, it's a fantastic upgrade for anyone looking to boost performance without breaking the bank. Installation was seamless, and load times have noticeably improved.

TLDR: The P310 is a speedy drive for not having DRAM. Most speeds are excellent, but its achilles heel is random read speeds. The P310 does a great job at masking the limitations of QLC NAND and no DRAM. Using a portion of the drive for caching along with the HMB, sequential read and write speeds are very good. Easily keeping pace with other higher priced DRAM/TLC-based SSD’s on the market. While the P310 can easily keep up with the latest PCIe Gen 4 x 4 speeds. Crucial claims read speeds of up to 7100MB/s and write speeds up to 6000MB/s. Those appear to be honest speeds and not some special optimized scenario. My install it and test it results matched Crucial’s speed claims (7009 / 6384), keeping pace with my P3 Plus and my T500. Well done. NEGATIVES First. Crucial claims up to 20% faster load and boot times. Comparing a fresh competitor’s drive in a new HP Omen 35L, real world speed improvements were minimal, at best. I could not tell any discernible difference in load and/or boot times. Second. The real drawback of the drive is the random read speeds. Sequential read / write speeds are great for testing & allows manufacturers to put out huge numbers and speeds, but the real meat and potatoes is random read / write. That is what a majority of the drive will do. With this, the random reads are slow. Averaging only 60MB/s, less than ½ its random write speeds. This is a noticeable difference and the P310 will lag behind compared to its higher end competition. CONCLUSION A QLC NAND based, DRAM-less drive was once something that I would never recommend for purchase. There were just too many shortfalls impeding performance. Improvement to the firmware and controllers have closed the gap with TLC drives containing a DRAM cache. Most users nowadays won’t notice any real performance differences between these QLC drives and higher prices premium units. The P310 falls into this category. It is a good drive with low power consumption to maximize battery life, an excellent 5-year warranty and should deserve a look for system upgraders. RECOMMENDED.

Overall, a really good NVME M.2 SSD. It has a lot of storage capacity, its reliable, and it is super fast for a 4th gen and for 2025. I would recommend it to anyone.

Good storage at high speeds. Easy to use. Works great in my system.

This 2tb ssd has tons of storage amazing write and read speed and took my computer from loading chrome in 5 mins to being able to boot it straight into a game and playing in 2

Easy to install and format, works fine. It took about 10 minutes to install and format, this is based on what you're putting it into, not this product

Excellent performance for a great price. I paired it with a artic heating to keep the thermals down great combo

The memory was easy to install in my laptop and it worked perfectly. It has been two months that I installed the memory and haven’t had a single issue with my laptop.

Easy to install and have not had any issues. I put it it in a PS5 for the additional storage.

super easy to install if you have spare computer screws laying around. it would be nice if it came with the screw and spacer to hold in place. It would be worth a couple extra bucks for that convenience. Works great overall. It been a while since adding a drive so had to look up a refresher on how to allocate the drive.

it fast and it has the space i was looking for if it craps out in i update the review

Works great, no issues, I use the computer every day, this SSD is very fast. The game No-Man-Sky use to take about two minutes to load from a spinning drive now the game is ready to play in about 30 seconds.

I needed a bigger HD for my laptop. I was running a 256gig and couldnt install Call of Duty. I was running it off of a portable HDD. This caused major lag. This harddrive made my computer feel so much more powerful. The fact that I can launch and load games so fast is a major game changer.