4TB Crucial P3 Plus PCIe Gen4 M.2 Solid State Drive Expired

It's important to note that this drive uses micron 176L qlc nand flash, which is of poor quality even among qlc nand. This 4tb drive has an endurance rating of 800tbw, which is exceptionally low. For reference, the solidigm 144L qlc nand (based on intel's qlc nand) used in the solidigm p41 plus qlc drive has double the endurance rating per tb. A decent quality 4tb tlc drive will generally have an endurance rating of 2400tbw, three times that of the p3 plus.

Additionally, the p3 plus has a fairly low tier controller, the Phison E21T (a low end controller for dramless drives from 2021), and lacks dram. Its random 4k performance, particularly at the more relevant low queue depths, is rather poor overall. The sequential read and write speeds are also low for a modern gen 4 drive, but those peak sequential speeds are basically meaningless above a few thousand for the vast majority of use cases.

Overall, at $150 this drive is good for the price if you just want basic mass storage, and will probably be decent as a low tier game drive. I would absolutely not recommend it for use as an OS/boot drive.

There are a bunch of good options, though now probably isn't the best time to buy an ssd since prices have increased over the past several months. I'd typically recommend purchasing from a brand with a strong presence in western markets, your best bets (for brands that offer decent value products) are probably: samsung, western digital, sk hynix, crucial, teamgroup, and solidigm (intel's old ssd division that got bought by hynix). For a boot drive I recommend a pcie gen 4 drive with tlc nand, dram, and a modern controller with good random 4k performance at low queue depths.

If you're on a tight budget you can get away with a drive without dram if it's got a recent controller with strong random 4k performance and hmb (host memory buffer), but dram is generally preferred. I would not recommend getting a qlc drive as a boot drive unless your budget is cataclysmically low, the increased endurance of tlc drives is rather important for use as an os drive. Peak sequential read and write speeds, despite being heavily marketed by basically every company out there, aren't terribly relevant for standard use cases. So long as the drive has a peak sequential read speed of at least 5000MB/s it should be fine. Random 4k read and write performance, denoted in iops, is far more relevant for actual performance.

There are certain things you should avoid in a drive where reliability is key, such as a boot drive. First off, many cheap drives with high end performance make use of the innogrit ig5236 (rainier) controller. The ig5236 is notorious for having a variety of issues, and drives with this controller should not be used as a boot drive unless you really feel like taking a gamble, keep full backups, and the drive is substantially cheaper than comparable options.
Next, ymtc 128L tlc nand is known to have reliability issues. That particular nand is used in many cheaper "high end" chinese drives, and should be avoided. To the best of my knowledge ymtc 232L nand does not have known issues currently. If you decide to get a drive with ymtc nand make absolutely sure it's 232L, and under no circumstances get a drive with ymtc nand and the ig5236 controller. Drives with both the ig5236 controller and ymtc nand brick themselves.

The current sweet spot in terms of price for capacity is 2tb. Prices have increased dramatically over the past several months, it used to be a high end gen4 2tb drive was $100 or less, but now you're lucky to find one for $120. In terms of specific product recommendations, I'm a bit out of date, but all the drives I list should offer very good performance and good value on sale. The list will be in order of most to least desirable, but any of them are perfectly suitable for use as a boot drive, and differences in real world performance will be minimal. This is by no means an exhaustive list, so please do your own research. Recommended drives off the top of my head (most to least desirable): samsung 990 pro, solidigm p44 pro, sk hynix p41 platinum, western digital black sn850x (avoid if you use windows bitlocker), crucial t500, samsung 980 pro, western digital black sn850 (avoid if you use windows bitlocker).