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Best SSDs For The Money: August 2012

Best SSDs For The Money: August 2012
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Are you still holding off on an SSD upgrade? You may not need to. Vendors are cutting their prices yet again. If you're on a budget, drives under £150 sure are tempting. This may be a temporary phenomenon, though; retailers are in "back to school" mode.

Detailed solid-state drive specifications and reviews are great—that is, if you have the time to do the research. However, at the end of the day, what an enthusiast needs is the best SSD within a certain budget.

So, if you don’t have the time to read the benchmarks, or if you don’t feel confident enough in your ability to pick the right drive, then fear not. We at Tom’s Hardware have come to your aid with a simple list of the best SSD offered for the money.

August Updates

We finally had an opportunity to review OCZ's Agility 4 family (we went ahead and bought every available capacity on Amazon). That story should be going live shortly, but we'll give you a teaser here. Overall, we came up with impressive results. As the budget-oriented derivative of the company's Vertex 4, the Agility 4 is a worthy successor to the Agility 3. We did end up with a few complaints, though. Even after recent price drops in the U.S., the Agility 3 and 4 cost about the same at each capacity point. However, the older SandForce-powered Agility 3 is a bit faster in our trace-based testing. As a result, if feels like you get more bang for your buck with an Agility 3 right now.

The debate ends up being pretty pointless, though. When it comes to pricing, there are fairly small gaps separating the value-oriented Agility and performance-oriented Vertex families, especially if you're taking full advantage of available rebates and special offers. It's most natural for us to recommend the faster Vertex, then.

But there's a little more to the story. When we first reviewed the Vertex 4, it was outperformed by the Vertex 3. However, improvements made to firmware version 1.5, which we discussed in OCZ Vertex 4 128 GB: Revisiting Write Performance With Firmware 1.5, essentially put the newer SSD on par with its predecessor. In the time between our original story and now, our 256 GB drive is almost 25% quicker.

This changes our opinion of the Vertex 4, since OCZ has a product able to more equally match the performance it offered previously in the Vertex 3. More than before the Vertex 4 seems to be a strong alternative to Samsung's 830 if you want a performance-oriented SSD that doesn't depend on compression technology to put its best foot forward.

Some Notes About Our Recommendations

A few simple guidelines to keep in mind when reading this list:

  • If you don't need to copy gigabytes of data quickly or load games in the blink of an eye, then there's nothing wrong with sticking with a mechanical hard drive. This list is intended for people who want the performance/responsiveness that SSDs offer, and operate on a specific budget. Now that Intel's Z68 Express chipset is available, the idea of SSD-based caching could come into play for more entry-level enthusiasts, too.
  • There are several criteria we use to rank SSDs. We try to evenly weigh performance and capacity at each price point and recommend what we believe to the best drive based on our own experiences, along with information garnered from other sites. Some people may only be concerned with performance, but that ignores the ever-present capacity issue that mobile users face ever-presently. Even on the desktop, other variables have to be considered.
  • Prices and availability change on a daily basis. Our picks will be valid the month of publication, but we can't extend our choices very far beyond that time frame. SSD pricing is especially competitive, and a £10 difference can be the reason why one SSD makes the list, while another does not. As you shop, use our list as a guide, but always double-check for yourself.
  • The list is based on some of the best U.S./UK prices from online retailers. In other countries or at retail stores, your mileage will most certainly vary.
  • These are new SSD prices. No used or open-box offers are in the list; they might represent a good deal, but it’s outside the scope of what we’re trying to do.
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  • 0 Hide
    DazzaJersey , 29 August 2012 18:55
    Hmm. Thanks for the article. Now I have to decide between the £37 OCZ Vertex 2E 120GB or the £75 Samsung 830 128GB.
  • 0 Hide
    shanky887614 , 31 August 2012 01:59
    what about the people that want a larger drive?


    bassically people like me who are going to buy a 500gb ssd because we are lazy and don't want to bother with data management
  • 0 Hide
    Tintee , 31 August 2012 15:14
    shanky887614 ...I`ve just ordered one of those 128gb 830s and two 256gb ones aswell after my vertex 2 died due to the sandforce controller issue. The drive just locked up and is now not seen in the bios at all. I will never buy another sandforce controlled drive! Did a lot of research and the samsungs appear to be very reliable.
  • 0 Hide
    guanyu210379 , 4 September 2012 16:26
    I have been using one Crucial m4 128GB on my PC for more than a year and one Samsung 830 256GB on my laptop since 3-4 months.
    I love them! :) 
    My 5 years old PC is now a lot faster than before...it is like I got a new PC :) 
  • 0 Hide
    Jb9643 , 23 September 2012 03:54
    I was going to buy a SSD but i changed my mind cause for what u get for your money is a Rip off. Am sticking to a hard-drive & plus to many problems with flash memory like write protection & errors . The Samsung 830 is not bad