In this review PCSTATS will be testing the 256GB Crucial M4 SSD, a 6Gb/s SATA III drive rated by the manufacturer for read speeds of up to 500MB/s and write speeds of 260MB/s (sequential). Crucial's M4 SSD uses 25nm MLC NAND Flash and the same Marvell controller that Intel relies on in several of its better known solid state drives. In the hierarchical world of Solid State Drives, Crucial's CT256M4SSD2 SSD slots into the upper-mainstream region - it's fast, yet it's not the fastest (or most expensive).

Looking at the numbers, Crucial's M4 SSD is spec'd for 4KB random reads at 45,000 IOPS and 4KB random writes at 50,000 IOPS -- placing it a hair slower than the OCZ Vertex 3 PCSTATS tested here. Under the Crucial M4's aluminum cover we find 256GB of Micron Multi-Level Cell NAND Flash, 256MB of Micron DRAM for the cache and a Marvell 88SS9174-BLD2 controller.

The M4 drive supports RAID, SMART, NCQ, TRIM, self monitoring and self analysis. Average access times are less than 0.1ms. Peak power consumption is 0.15W, idle is a scant 65mW so this puppy can certainly help extend the battery life of any notebook by replacing a spindle'd hard drive. The 1.2 million hours MTBF rating on Crucial's M4 SSD is slightly lower than other solid state drives PCSTATS recently tested, most of which have averaged 2M hours. It's backed by a 3 year limited warranty.