The Crucial M550 SSD is faster than the previous Crucial M500 SSDSSD and mainatins key features such as 20nm NAND Flash, hardware-based AES 256-bit encryption, TCG Opal 2.0-compliant firmware, along with data integrity and temperature control features. There M550 is also one of the only consumer-grade drives with power loss protection and it even supports DevSleep to enable low-power states in mobile platforms.

The Marvell 88SS9187 controller supports true hardware encryption, it treats all files in the same manner regardless of whether they’re compressed or uncompressed, and packs features for power loss and thermal protection which make it suitable for use in enterprise applications.

Judging from its specs, the M550 offers with reads and writes of 550MB/s. However, although it's a serious upgrade over the M500, the Crucial's flagship offering does not offer the performance of some other high-end SSDs in the market, especially if you are a power user seeking for the absolute benchmark results. But generally, the M550 is fast enough to justify the added cost over the M500 and saves you money.

The Crucial M550 512GB is an overall solid SSD designed for everyone, packed with performance and enterprise features and available at a competitive price. The 512GB (488.4GB for the user) drive is retailing for $337 which is translated to a great $0.69 per GB.