Crucial T500 review: "At the highest end of the market, this doesn't stand out in the same way"

The Crucial T500 is the evolution of one of the first SSDs I ever went hands-on with, the Crucial P5 Plus. That drive represented a superb entry point into modern storage devices because, with read/write speeds of 6,800MB/s and 5,000MB/s respectively, it offered gamers a chance to reap the benefits of NVME PCIe Gen 4 technology without breaking the bank. The P5 Plus has sadly been discontinued now, and has had to be removed from our best SSD for PS5 list as the best budget option.

The T500 looks to replace it, but after testing it out, it doesn’t fill that same gap in the market. Instead, this is taking aim at the biggest guns of the Gen 4 M.2 arena.

Available in 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB sizes, both with and without an integrated heatsink, it feels geared at PS5 players most of all. SSD MSRPs are about as trustworthy as Donald Trump’s Springfield pet-eating theories, but regardless, the 1TB T500 will set you back around $79.99 / £79.

99 at the time of writing if you don’t opt for an integrated heatsink. Go for the PS5 no-faff option, and you’ll need to spend $89.99 / £89.

99 on average. I tested the 2TB heatsink model for this review. Design For folks like me who were big fans of the Crucial P5 Plus , the design of the T500 made me think it was just a rebranding to begin with.

All Crucial SSDs look identical these days, but the T500 looks almost exactly like the P5 Plus. All black and sporting a blocky, rectangular heatsink, the T500 is about as basic as these drives .