After checking out the P1, P2 and P5 series, it is now time to take a closer look at the P3 series of SSD drives from Crucial. The P3 drive is marketed as an entry-level to mainstream PCIe 3.0 SSD, with capacities starting from 500GB and up to a whopping 4TB and an affordable pricing scheme.

Our 2TB sample has been shipped inside a standard Crucial packaging model, which means that we are dealing with a cardboard enclosure on the outside and a transparent plastic layer on the inside. The top layer also comes with a sealing sticker that incorporates the rated read speeds of the 2TB SKU:

On the back side, we will note the fact that the SSD is backed up with a data transfer software (Acronis), a written instruction guide, but the product also allows firmware updates. The product is also backed up by a limited 5-year warranty given that we do not break the mentioned TBW rating:

As mentioned before, inside the box we will find a transparent protective plastic mold:

Here we will get the guide, the main product but also a fixing screw:

The guide redirects the user to online resources:

Crucial is the only manufacturer we have seen which offers M.2 SSD mounting screws in the box:

The P3 SSD comes with the frontal area of the PCB completely covered by a sticker, carrying the Crucial logo, but also the product logo:

On the back side we will note a lack of extra components, but only two stickers which include the product code name, its serial number, but also its power rating:

After removing the frontal sticker, we did note four NAND ICs, a central controller, and no DRAM cache:

The packages have the 2LC2D NY161 inscription on each of them and these are Micron 3D QLC NAND (176-layer N48R FortisFlash) with 512GB capacity:

For the controller, we do have a Phison PS5021-E21T, which incorporates an ARM 32-bit Cortex-R5 architecture with a single CPU. For caching purposes, it does use HMB (Host Memory Buffer):