Crucial T710 - SSD - encrypted - 2 TB - internal - M.2 2280 - PCI Express 5.0 (NVMe) - TCG Opal Encryption 2.01

Product Overview

AI-generated summary

Crucial’s T710 is the sort of SSD you buy when you actually care about performance *and* enterprise-style data protection, without paying the big-brand “server tax”. The encrypted + TCG Opal angle is the key: if you’ve got managed fleets, want drive-level locking/encryption that IT can administer, or you simply want less worry about data at rest, it’s a sensible choice. The £388.70 ex-VAT for 2TB is also pretty competitive for a modern PCIe 5 NVMe drive—assuming your hosts can genuinely make use of PCIe 5.

That said, I wouldn’t automatically buy it for every workstation or laptop just because it’s PCIe 5. If the device is only running PCIe 4 (or you’re mainly doing light office work), you won’t feel the upside, and you might be better off spending less on a PCIe 4 encrypted drive. It’s also worth checking that your deployment process supports Opal properly—drive encryption is only “easy” if your management tooling plays nicely. Overall: great fit for IT-managed desktops, thin clients, or small servers where encryption matters and you want strong real-world speed per pound. Less compelling for general-purpose installs where performance headroom won’t be used.