Compare Crucial T710 2TB and Crucial T500 2TB: prices, speeds, $/TB. Which to buy in May 2026? Full spec breakdown.
Crucial T710 2TB vs Crucial T500 2TB pits two different generations against each other at 2 TB. The question isn't which is faster on paper — that's settled — it's whether the bandwidth gap shows up in your specific workload.
Hardware-wise, the Crucial T710 2TB runs on the SMI SM2508 — a 6nm Gen 5 controller running notably cooler than first-gen Phison E26 designs. The Crucial T500 2TB pairs Phison's E25 silicon, found in many DRAM-equipped Gen 4 SSDs.
Price separates these two meaningfully. The Crucial T500 2TB costs $94.50/TB versus $224.50/TB for the Crucial T710 2TB — a 58% premium that needs justification in real benchmarks, not just spec-sheet bragging.
Read speeds favor the Crucial T710 2TB: 14,500 MB/s versus 7,400 MB/s for the Crucial T500 2TB, a 49% advantage. Sequential-heavy workloads notice; transactional workloads don't.
The Crucial T710 2TB writes about 50% faster (14,000 MB/s vs 7,000 MB/s). Whether that matters depends entirely on what you write to the drive — gameplay capture and large project saves benefit, browsing and gaming do not.
Heading to a PlayStation 5? Both drives drop into the console's M.2 bay and report identical real-world benchmarks since the PS5 caps storage at PCIe 4.0 speeds. The Crucial T500 2TB wins this matchup on $/TB. The leap from Gen 4 to Gen 5 doubles peak throughput on paper but produces single-digit-percent improvements in game load times, OS boot, and most productivity benchmarks. The Crucial T500 2TB is the better default unless you have a specific workload that needs the extra lanes. Heavy write workloads — video editing, RAW photo libraries, backup operations — favor the Crucial T710 2TB's 14,000 MB/s sustained write speed. Both drives use the 2280 form factor, which is too long for Steam Deck or ROG Ally — you'd need a 2230 variant if either manufacturer offers one, or a dedicated handheld-format drive instead.
Pick the Crucial T710 2TB if you value meaningfully faster reads (14,500 MB/s), and higher sustained writes (14,000 MB/s). Crucial drives benefit from being a direct Micron product — the same NAND that powers competitors' drives, but at lower margins.
Pick the Crucial T500 2TB if you value the lower retail price ($189 vs $449), and better $/TB economics ($94.50/TB). Crucial typically delivers the best $/TB among DRAM-equipped NVMes because Micron sells direct rather than going through brand licensing.