CrystalDiskMark 5.1.1 is an industry standard benchmark for testing the raw speed of a storage device. It uses a test file to variously write data to or read data from the drive, checking for sequential read and write speed and random read and write performance, with it also testing performance at various queue depths. The size of the test file can be selected from 50MB to 32GB. We test using the default 1GB file size.
The storage on this laptop is one area that’s a little disappointing. While nearly all SSDs are fast enough for most tasks, there’s no getting round the fact that the one included here is slow in comparison to many other options out there. Many relatively inexpensive 256GB M.2 SSDs will easily double the speed of this drive.
Meanwhile, the 1TB hard drive offers the sort of performance that’s typical for a basic 2.5inch drive. With 1TB SSDs now available for well under £200, upgrading this 2.5inch drive would be a good way to ensure all the data on your laptop can be accessed nice and quickly.