Crucial's BX100 may be one of this year's most eagerly anticipated drives and that shouldn't come as a surprise given the amazing abilities of its bigger brother, the MX200. Both drives were announced at CES but the BX100 was arguably the more popular of the two. Perhaps this was due to it being a brand new value-oriented drive series from an extremely well respected company or maybe the interest came from it offering some impressive performance numbers despite a very affordable price point. Regardless of the whys, what we have on the test bench today is the BX100 1TB, an SSD that could very well represent a significant step towards the demise of spindle-based alternatives.

The BX100 represents a fairly significant departure for Crucial. Unlike the MX100, MC200 and M5xx-series, it eschews the usual Marvell controller design and instead uses Silicon Motion's 2246EN. Throughout 2015 we'll likely see this controller become the de-facto standard for entry-level since it combines fairly robust performance metrics via a 4-channel layout with the capability for advanced encryption via AES 128/256 and TCG OPAL standards. Add in an average power draw of just 60mV and an advanced global wear leveling algorithm for enhanced endurance and it isn't hard to see why we'll be seeing a lot of this thing.

Crucial's adaptation is running 16nm MLC 128GBit NAND which shouldn't be a surprise but what will likely draw most people in is the BX100's price. With an MSRP of $400 for the 1TB model (or a mere 40 cents per GB), there's a lot to be excited about here.