Crucial P3 Plus Review 2026
Affordable Gen4 speed for everyday builds and upgrades.
What We Like
- Very affordable Gen4 drive
- 5,000 MB/s reads — far faster than SATA
- Good for gaming and general use
- Available up to 4TB
What We Don't
- No DRAM cache (HMB instead)
- Lower sustained write endurance
Quick Specs
| Form factor | M.2 2280 |
|---|---|
| Interface | PCIe Gen4 x4, NVMe 1.4 |
| Capacities | 500GB / 1TB / 2TB / 4TB |
| Sequential read | Up to 5,000 MB/s |
| Sequential write | Up to 4,200 MB/s |
| Random read (4K) | Up to 680,000 IOPS |
| Random write (4K) | Up to 850,000 IOPS |
| NAND flash | 3D QLC |
| DRAM cache | No (HMB) |
| Warranty | 5 years |
Review
The Crucial P3 Plus is the budget door into PCIe 4.0. At around half the price of flagship drives, it still delivers 5,000 MB/s reads — a huge jump over SATA SSDs and fast enough for gaming, everyday multitasking, and even light content work.
To hit that price it drops the DRAM cache (using Host Memory Buffer instead) and uses QLC NAND, which lowers sustained-write endurance. For an OS or game drive these are reasonable trade-offs; for constant large file writes, a TLC drive is the better fit.
If you're upgrading an older laptop or building a budget PC and want the most capacity per dollar, the P3 Plus is hard to beat.
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