Crucial RealSSD C300 VS M4

So a little bird told me that the Crucial RealSSD C300 is going on sale on Amazon in a few hours. I've been holding out to get a Crucial M4 128GB, but if this is at the right price i may go for the C300 instead.

Does anyone know how the M4 compares to the C300?

 

1. Do you have a SATA III bus?

2. C300. M4 suffers from the same LPM issues, and C300 has higher random speeds and endures more NAND wear.

 

Yup my M11x has SATAIII support.

Also it looks like the C300 uses ALOT more power when writing than the M4 does, it even looks like it uses more power than my 7200RPM drive does. Is it going to have much of an effect on battery life?

 

Hmm, I can't really comment, but I seemed to get the same battery life as others did when I first got my P150HM.

 

The M4 is faster, especially since the new firmware 009. And like you said it uses less power.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4712/the-crucial-m4-ssd-update-faster-with-fw0009/5

LPM issues of the M4 have been long solved.

 

So reliability wise and as far as random writes (which is really what matters) is concerned, the C300 is going to be better? Will it last any longer than the M4 would?

This is mainly a portable browser & gaming machine, i can't imagine i would be using the sequential speeds too much, just transferring the odd movie to-from my external drive.

I guess the ultimate decider will be what price the C300 comes on sale for, but i want to know exactly what to do when it does so i can snap it up fast.

 

Maybe I'm talking gibberish so I'll rephrase it The M4 beats the C300 in every real world benchmark you throw at it.

If you don't believe Anandtechs benchmarks linked above check out Hardwareheaven (4 pages real world).
Crucial m4 256GB SSD (C400) Review - Install Times

The HH benchmarks were run with old firmware, using the new firmware the difference between M4 and C300 becomes even bigger.

The theory that the SSD with the fastest 4K random write performance will perform the fastest in real life situations is outdated.

The C300 could still be a good buy if the price is significantly lower than the M4.

You won't notice any difference in longevity.

 

Yea sorry mate i got what you said, i just wrote that post before you posted yours, i just took a while to post it

What price point would the 128GB C300 have to be at, to make it a more worthwhile purchase over the M4? $180?

I'm only in the US for another 9 days, so hence why I'm sounding a little impatient. Once I'm back in Australia the prices are an extra $30-40. I leave the day after Black Friday too, so waiting for the M4 to go on sale is not an option sadly.

 

Crucial M4 128GB seems to be about $199.

For me the C300 would have to be less than $170 to consider it (not saying I would buy it). While it's nice the C300 uses 34nm NAND, I feel the M4 is the more reliable product. The lower power consumption of the M4 is also nice.

 

Yea i mean back in Australia i'm looking at $230+ for an M4, but i'm not in a hurry to get one so unless it goes on sale within the next few days I'm not going to pick one up. I can just wait until the market price for them drops down.

But if the C300 comes down to around $160 i may have to get it, if nothing else then at least for resale value (rrp is still around $240).

 

Intel 320 and Samsung 470 could be good deals too, depending on the price.

 

Do you have any benchmarks showing the 128GB M4 versus the 128GB C300?

I know the 256GB M4 performs higher than the 128GB, but i want to see that compared with the 128GB C300 because i'm not going to be getting a 256GB drive.

I found this one: AnandTech - The 2011 Mid-Range SSD Roundup: 120GB Agility 3, Intel 510 and More Compared But the M4 isn't in there.

 

No I don't but Crucial M4 128GB with firmware 009 beats Vertex 3 120GB and Intel 510 120GB in these real world benchmarks: Crucial m4 128GB | Trace-based benchmarks | Core | Tweakers.net Reviews

Techreport: SSDs in the sweet spot: Modern contenders at 120-128GB - The Tech Report - Page 11 (my suggestion is to ignore all synthetic benchmarks)

 

Hehe oh well, it was the 256GB C300 that went on sale for $329... It lasted all of 45 seconds before it sold out.

 

So you didn't get one I guess?

 

Nah i didn't, i wanted a 128GB... Not to mention if i was going to pay that much, a 256GB M4 is only $50 extra.

 

Phil,
What do you think about the 64GB C300 vs the 64GB M4? Is the 64GB M4 faster/better?

 

Sequential write speed on the Samsung is higher. Power consumption of Crucial is probably a little lower.

In reality I doubt anyone would notice a difference, except for copying files, then the Samsung is faster.