The 1.8-inch 128GB Crucial RealSSD C300 solid-state drive is a great storage solutions for everyone who needs a fast storage medium with a small footprint. The drive performed pretty well in most of our tests, although it cannot fully match the performance of the SF-1200 SSD controller based SSDs of the same capacity. On the other hand, the drive has a 6Gbps SATA interface that will be natively supported by most upcoming motherboards.

The drive is made for use under the Windows 7 operating system since it natively supports TRIM without any extra TRIM utility needed. This means that poor byte aligned performance and clear degradation over time with heavy random writes is not an option for the drive.

Though we didn't have the chance to test the drive connected to a 6Gbps SATA controller, it still showed great potential in the reading tasks taking advantage of the available SATA bandwidth and maxing out at 220MB/sec. In order to enjoy the maximum supported 355MB/sec reading speed you 'll have to install the drive in a SATA 6GB/sec port. However, most users are not having this this option in their notebooks, at least for now. Using an external PCI controller for enjoying 6GB/s SATA speeds is still an option, although these are not always performing as expected to.

In the writing part, the drive reached a decent 140 MB/s.

We generally found the drive to be snappy for everyday use, carrying all the positives of the RealSSD series and the latest firmware Ver. 006 seems to slightly improve the overall performance, although we measured some lower writing speeds in specific tests.

.The 1.8-inch 128GB Crucial RealSSD C300 retails for about $300, which is slightly more than other 2.5" 128GB SSDs. And of course, in case you have an older laptop, you'll have to get an extra mSATA to SATA adaptor to have your SSD work.

The Crucial RealSSD 1.8" 128GB SSD drive is a good deal if you really need a fast 1.8" SSD for your new PC or laptop. As a new product, it will perform faster than many other currently available SSDs and will not let you down in terms of stability. If only Crucial offered a 5-year warranty for the drive.

Positive

+ Very high reading up to 355MB/sec when used with SATA2 6GB/sec port
+ Writing is up to 140MB/sec, at least for the 128GB model
+ Drive worked great during our benchmark
+ Supports TRIM command
+ 3 years of warranty
+ Active forum community

Negative

- Competitors offers more years of warranty
- Retail price might be found high for some users
- Adapter is needed for using this drive with majority of currently available laptops