After receiving a great response from my earlier article “Kingston A2000 vs Crucial P2“, I decided to give my honest opinions on Kingston A2000 vs Crucial P1 as well.
Both Kingston A2000 and Crucial P1 are tough competitors to each other with pretty similar specifications. However, before starting, I would like to tell you that the A2000 beats the P1 in almost all the niches. But, the numbers are not that much far. This is the reason why people are really confused between them both.
The A2000 comes with numerous benefits over the P1 along with its 2200/2000 MB/s speed and the TLC 3D NAND.
Whereas, the P1 has 2000/1700 MB/s speed and a QLC 3D NAND.
There are numerous other things which we are going to discover below about both. So, without any further delays, let’s get started.
Theoretical Specifications
Let’s see the main differences between the specifications shown by both brands. The actual benchmark scores can be found in the next section.
| Specification | Kingston A2000 (1TB) | Crucial P1 (1TB) |
|---|---|---|
| Storage Space Options | 250 GB, 500 GB, 1TB | 500 GB, 1TB, 2TB |
| Read Speed (Seq.) | 2200 MB/s | 2000 MB/s |
| Write Speed (Seq.) | 2000 MB/s | 1700 MB/s |
| Random 4K Read | 250,000 IOPS | 170,000 IOPS |
| Random 4K Write | 220,000 IOPS | 240,000 IOPS |
These specifications are highlighted by the companies for their products. But, keep a thing in mind that they have very little to do with the actual performance because it will vary depending on the systems as well. However, these are the maximum speed limits, not the average.
The A2000 doesn’t have the 2TB version which I think should be available.
Check Kingston A2000 Data Sheet
Benchmark Scores
These tests were done using CrystalDiskMark on an 8th generation i7 processor and 8GB RAM on Windows OS. The performance may vary depending on the total storage space of the drive and your system specs. We are discussing the results only for the 1TB variants of both these products.
Kingston A2000 Benchmark Scores (Average/1TB)
| Sequential Read | Sequential Write | Random 4K Read | Random 4K Write |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1520 MB/s | 1315 MB/s | 58.6 MB/s | 141 MB/s |
Crucial P1 Benchmark Scores (Average/1TB)
| Sequential Read | Sequential Write | Random 4K Read | Random 4K Write |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1,475 MB/s | 1298 MB/s | 61.1 MB/s | 127 MB/s |
Now, with these results, you can clearly see that the A2000 is the winner in terms of real-time applications. I tried restarting my PC several times and saw that the A2000 was able to boot it just within 8 seconds whereas the P1 took around 12 seconds. The same was happening with the software boots. However, the difference is not that huge. So, I am pretty sure that the P1 would also offer great results.
TBW or Endurance
TBW or Tera-Bytes Written is a parameter used to calculate and compare the endurance of the SSD. The higher the TBW, the longer life would an SSD have. Though for most of the users, those huge data read/write limits are very tough to complete, I would love to compare them as well.
| Product | TBW/MTTF | Product | TBW/MTTF |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kingston A2000 (250 GB) | 150/2.0M | Crucial P1 (500 GB) | Up to 400/1.8M |
| Kingston A2000 (500 GB) | 350/2.0M | Crucial P1 (1TB) | Up to 400/1.8M |
| Kingston A2000 (1 TB) | 600/2.0M | Crucial P1 (2TB) | Up to 400/1.8M |
Crucial hasn’t given the proper details about its TBW limits on the P1 Data Sheet. However, we can expect up to 400 TBW which is not a satisfactory number. The A2000 1TB still has higher TBW and MTTF. Hence, it is surely a much reliable choice.
Note: Read this article if you want to know more about the TBW or MTTF.
NAND, Controller, DRAM, etc
Kingston A2000 is equipped with a better NAND as compared to the Crucial P1 as we have already discussed. It has 64/96 Layers of 3D TLC NAND whereas the P1 has 64 layers of 3D QLC NAND. So, in terms of performance and durability, A2000 is a little ahead. Both the SSDs are using Micon’s NAND.
If we talk about the controller, both these SSDs are coincidently using the same controller i.e. SMI SM2263. The configurations are also similar i.e. Dual-Core and 4 Channels.
The Crucial P1 is using Micron’s 1866MHz DDR3 DRAM. The 1TB version has 1GB and the 500GB version has 500MBs of DRAM.
The Kingston A2000 is using a DDR4 DRAM which is a little bit faster than P1’s DDR3 RAM. So, we can say that the A2000 is going to work well when it comes to the tasks related to the DRAM.
So, there is a difference in the type of NAND used inside them otherwise, everything else is pretty similar. Because P1 has QLC NAND, it would have low reliability as compared to the A2000’s TLC (more reliable than QLC) NAND.
Price
Both these SSDs come in the Budget NVMe section. These both are cheaper than the industry leaders like SAMSUNG 970 Pro or Gigabyte Aorus etc. However, the price difference is very minimal.
Kingston A2000
Crucial P1
As you can see above, there is a very minimal difference between the prices of both SSDs (1TB version). The 2TB version of P1 is acceptably expensive. Still, in terms of price, the P1 surely has an advantage for you.
Which one should you buy? Crucial P1 or Kingston A2000
In my opinion, you should go for the A2000 because of three main reasons.
The first reason is its better sequential and random read/write speed as compared to the P1. The second reason is its better NAND Flash. The third reason is the market reputation of Kingston.
However, I would admit that Crucial P1 also offers great features if we look at its price range. The benchmark scores are not that far away. But, if you ask me to buy one from these, I would go for A2000. But, at the same time, I am always a big fan of Crucial as well.