Crucial T500

Released in 2023, the T500 was Crucial's first drive targeting the gaming and high-performance consumer segment. It uses a Phison E18 controller, Micron 176-layer 3D TLC NAND, and an LPDDR4 DRAM cache. Sequential read is rated at 7,200–7,400 MB/s and write at 6,000–7,000 MB/s depending on capacity. It is compatible with all PCIe 4.0 x4 hosts including PlayStation 5 M.2 expansion slots.

Sequential write is 6,000 MB/s at 500GB, 6,800 MB/s at 1TB, and 7,000 MB/s at 2TB. TBW is 300/600/1,200 for the three SKUs, on par with other E18-based drives (and other high-end M.2 SSDs in general). You could get it with or without a heatsink, the latter being a requirement from Sony when used as a storage expansion drive for the PS5. Standard variants use the CT*T500SSD8 suffix, heatsink variants CT*T500SSD5. All SKUs came with a five-year warranty.

The T500 is the successor to the P5 Plus and Crucial's first drive targeting the premium PCIe 4.0 tier. Its key competitors at launch were the Samsung 990 Pro, WD Black SN850X, and Kingston Fury Renegade.