Earlier this week, word leaked out that Crucial is prepping a new MX100 SSD. The drive is set to arrive early next month, and we’ll have a full review when the time comes. In the meantime, we can reveal a couple of details about the new model.
The MX100 is based on 16-nm flash fabbed by Micron, Crucial’s parent company. It comes in a 2.5″ form factor, and it’s slated to replace the budget-priced M500. The M550 will remain in Crucial’s lineup as a higher-performance product, so the MX100 will presumably be slower.
Those are all the official details we have on the MX100 right now. But we do know a little more about Micron’s next-gen NAND, which started sampling last summer. The MLC chips weigh in at 16GB and pack two bits per cell. Micron’s own website says the NAND “will be released on next-generation SSDs in 2014,” so odds are those chips are in the MX100. The company told investors in April that it doesn’t expect to ship 16-nm TLC NAND until the end of 2014.