Crucial's New 512 GB m4 SSD Costs $1000

Wednesday Lexar Media announced its new Crucial m4 line of solid state drives, designed for both business customers and general consumers. Although the drives aren't quite as zippy as SF-2200 based SSDs just launched on the market, the 512 GB model does offer an impressive pricetag: $999.99.

Now available worldwide, the new Crucial m4 SSD line features a 2.5-inch form factor using Micron's 25-nm MLC NAND Flash tech and a SATA 6 Gb/s interface. They also arrive in four tasty flavors: 64 GB, 128 GB, 256 GB and 512 GB. Across the board, the sequential read speeds are up to 415 MB/s, but the sequential write speeds range from up to 95 MB/s to 260 MB/s, depending on the capacity.

As for other specs, the Crucial m4 line includes a random 4K read of 40,000 IOPS, a random 4K write of up to 50,000 IOPS (depending on the capacity), and an average access time of less than .1-ms. These low power, durable SSDs also have a MTBF of 1.2 million hours, feature built-in EDC/ECC and come packed with a limited 3-year warranty.

"The new Crucial m4 SSD builds on the enormous success of its predecessor, the Crucial RealSSD C300. As a subsidiary of Micron Technology, we're in the unique position of leveraging Micron's NAND development and manufacturing expertise for our Crucial branded SSDs," said Robert Wheadon, worldwide senior product manager. "These next-generation m4 SSDs offer customers higher capacities and even greater performance at affordable prices."

The new Crucial m4 line arrives with "competitive" pricing, costing $129.99 for the 64 GB SSD, $249.99 for the 128 GB SSD, $499.99 for the 256 GB SSD, and a meaty $999.99 for the 512 GB SSD. The drives are now available for purchase through the Crucial website or via leading channel partners worldwide.