At a look
Professional’s Ranking
Execs
- Wonderful PCIe 4.0 efficiency
- Very inexpensive for an NVMe SSD with DRAM
- As much as 2TB of capability
- Out there with low-profile heatsink
Cons
- Very sluggish when secondary cache runs out
- 600TBW-per-1TB score is merely common
Our Verdict
The T500 is among the quickest PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs I’ve examined. It’s inexpensive for its ilk and out there with a low-profile heatsink for an additional $10.
Worth When Reviewed
500GB: £90 I 1TB: £120 I 2TB: £170
Greatest Costs Right now: Essential T500 NVMe SSD
£60.99
£156.95
Essential is at it once more, delivering a PCIe 4 NVMe SSD with glorious efficiency at an inexpensive value level. After all, it’s not the equal of the PCIe 5.0 T700, but it surely’s extremely aggressive with the very best of the PCIe 4.0 SSDs that I’ve examined.
Additional studying: See our roundup of the very best PCIe 4.0 SSDs to study competing merchandise.
What are the Essential T500’s major options?
The T500 is a PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2, 2280 (22mm extensive, 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 quite a lot of 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.
How a lot does the Essential T500 price?
The T500 is accessible 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 accessible with the 1TB and 2TB fashions, which raises these costs $10, to $130 and $180.
Jon L. Jacobi
How lengthy is the T500 guarantee?
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 permits you to write as much as 600 terabytes for each 1TB of NAND with none drop in capability, or going into read-only mode because of cells sporting out.
Because of the onboard DRAM and its fast random efficiency, this can be a nice drive to run your working system off of.
How briskly is the Essential T500?
Quick reply: The Essential T500 may be very quick. It didn’t fairly match the superb Solidigm P44 Professional general, but it surely wasn’t far behind and bested that rival in a number of particular person exams.
Be aware 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 by means of its glorious CrystalDiskMark 8 efficiency within the 4K exams.
The T500 did fairly effectively 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 really set a brand new document (even besting PCIe 5.0 sorts) in our 450GB write; nonetheless, 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’ll be able to’t write greater than 600MB earlier than write speeds drop, however the drive will nonetheless carry out effectively even when almost full. Clearly, the slowdown will happen sooner on the 1TB mannequin.
Do you have to purchase the Essential T500?
If you need glorious PCIe 4.0 efficiency at a very good value, the T500 must be in your tire-kicking record. And because of the onboard DRAM and its fast random efficiency, it’s additionally a fantastic drive to run your working system off of.
How we take a look at
Inner drive exams at the moment make the most of Home windows 11, 64-bit operating 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 exams make the most of an ImDisk RAM disk taking over 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. Be aware that in regular use, as a drive fills up, efficiency will lower because of much less NAND for secondary caching, in addition to different components.
Caveat: The efficiency numbers proven apply solely to the drive we had been shipped and to the capability examined. SSD efficiency can and can differ by capability because of extra or fewer chips to shotgun reads/writes throughout and the quantity of NAND out there for secondary caching. Distributors additionally sometimes swap parts. In the event you ever discover a big discrepancy between the efficiency you expertise and that which we report, by all means, tell us.
