Micron has a new client SSD line using new QLC NAND. The Micron 2500 is a PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD based on the company’s new 232-layer QLC NAND. QLC has been a hot topic in the industry since it has a higher density with lower performance and endurance.
Micron 2500 PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD with 232L QLC NAND
Micron has been on the 232L NAND for some time (and we have reviewed YMTC 232L drives a number of times as well), but the new QLC NAND offers more density than TLC NAND, which is the point. We spend a lot of time discussing SSD performance, but at some point, capacity matters. We reviewed the 32TB Micron 9400 Pro as an early performance-oriented 30.72TB drive and just reviewed a Solidigm D5-P5336 61.44TB SSD. Client SSDs are still stuck in the 8TB and below range. QLC will be one of the technologies that hopefully changes this.
The first client OEM drive with the 232L QLC NAND is the Micron 2500. This is a DRAM-less HMB SSD designed for cost-sensitive deployments. Endurance numbers are not high on these drives, but something is notable: there are no 256GB and below models. These start at 512GB. We often see these SSDs in systems like our Project TinyMiniMicro series of 1L corporate PCs. Over the years, we have seen 256GB SSDs too many times. As SSDs hit 512GB and higher it raises the minimum capacity for those SSDs. Something is also notable insofar as these drives only reach 2TB in capacity since they are lower-cost SSDs. To us, it would be great to see 4TB drives in a low-cost SSD for pure capacity applications. 8TB drives tend to cost a lot more.
That capacity is interesting since the Micron 2500 slots below the Micron 2550 while also supporting M.2 2280, 2242, and 2230 form factors. Micron offers roughly double the capacity on the QLC NAND 2500 series versus the TLC NAND 2550 series.
Since many OEM PCs prioritize capacity per dollar over performance, we might end up seeing many of these drives in OEM systems going forward.
Final Words
Micron’s Crucial brand tends to have the drives the company sells to consumers via retail channels, while Micron branded drives, like this, tend to be sold to OEMs. If you are wondering about the competitiveness of Micron’s SSDs compared to other SSDs, you might look at something like the Crucial T705 2TB PCIe Gen5 NVMe SSD we reviewed. These are more for the OEM systems segment.
On one hand, the specs do not lead us to believe that this is some kind of great-performing drive. If we can get one, we will run it through our benchmarks. On the other hand, performance is not the point. This is a capacity play in the OEM space.
One has to wonder if QLC NAND is “the SMR of SSDs.” Surpassing Dante’s 9 voltage levels of Cell Hell, and best left to very specific use cases by large users with the requisite engineering talent to care for it properly.
I guess at one point the thought might have been that Optane would get us past NAND semi-Purgatorio (TLC) and delivered us extremely reliable storage products worthy of Paradiso.
Perhaps 5 years out from now, we will know if QLC/PLC has been The Divine Comedy.
Carl, I believe it is. QLC is not performant nor endurant. Even TLC gets a lot of help from SLC caches and channelization.