NAND production cuts earlier in the year have resulted in pricing chaos. Some SSDs are up, while others are down. Fortunately, most still fall under £0.65 per gigabyte. We're updating our recommendations for March in light of the recent movements
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.
July Updates: The Calm Before The Storm?
Our Best SSDs for the Money column was on hiatus for a few months as we shuffled around resources internally. However, given all of the changes happening in the solid-state marketplace, now is a great time to revisit the list.
As a specialist who pays particularly close attention to the changing performance and pricing of storage, it's hard for me not to lament the fact that SSDs are starting to get more expensive. We've become used to this constant erosion of the price per gigabyte measurement attributable to advancements in manufacturing technology. But it appears to be slowing significantly right now.
There's no way to know how long this is going to last. Fortunately, though, not all of the news in the SSD business is bad. We're still looking at unprecedentedly-low prices. So, if you've been on the fence about purchasing a first SSD, or are simply in the market for a drive to power your next high-end build, now is still a great time to be shopping for solid-state storage. The latest offerings deliver top-shelf performance and the biggest capacities ever seen. You can have your cake and it, too.

It could be that the entire industry is taking a breath before things get crazy. Just over the horizon, we're expecting new 2.5" models from some of our favorite manufacturers. But there are new controllers, form factors, and interfaces coming as well. As a desktop guy, it's hard to imagine faster storage making much of a difference, especially when a lot of the random performance today's SSDs enable is going unused. But maximum sequential speeds in excess of 1 GB/s sure sound sexy for moving big files around quickly.
As enthusiasts, that puts us in a difficult situation. We like fast stuff as much as you do. But the real impact of solid-state storage serving as your boot and application drive comes from, well, just having an SSD. Even a drive as old and as (relatively) slow as Intel's old 40 GB X25-V conveys the modern SSD experience pretty well. Moving to a more modern repository will help only marginally in most circumstances. That means you shouldn't be buying your SSD based on its benchmarked performance alone. Price, capacity, and other features are often more important than raw speed.
In the months to come, we're going to see today's SATA-based SSDs start to be replaced by SATA Express- and M.2-based (formerly NGFF) devices. To be clear, both are form factors. SATA Express is designed for the desktop, and will surface first on Intel Z97 Express-based motherboards early in 2014. A SATA Express host will support up to two PCI Express lanes or a single SATA port, and a SATA Express device connector will support up to two PCIe lanes. M.2 is notebook and tablet-oriented, and supports up to four lanes of PCIe or one SATA port. The good news in both cases is that, although we're on the brink of a next-generation interface, there's no reason to hold off on a SATA-based drive today. They'll maintain compatibility moving forward, protecting your investment.
Storage Reviews For The Month:
Seagate Desktop HDD 4TB Review: Big Capacity At 5900 RPM
SanDisk Ultra Plus SSD Reviewed At 64, 128, And 256 GB
The SSD DC S3500 Review: Intel's 6 Gb/s Controller And 20 nm NAND
SanDisk Extreme II SSD Review: Striking At The Heavy-Hitters
OCZ Vertex 450 256 GB SSD Review: Can We Call It Vector Jr.?
Seagate 600 SSD 240 GB Review: LAMD And Toshiba, Together Again
Seagate 600 Pro-Series 200 GB SSD Review: For The Enterprise
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 most Intel's 115x chipsets have caching baked in, 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. 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.
Create a new thread in the UK Article comments forum about this subject
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0 HideAndrew Mitchell , 25 July 2013 18:58I have a first generation SanDisk Ultra (not the plus) 120GB SSD and after about 14 months it's still going strong. It cost about £65 when I got it and for a budget drive it truly is amazing. So much so that I got another one when they were on offer at £54 before they moved over to the "Ultra Plus" line. They really are good to consider if you're building on a budget and they are of course considerably faster than mechanical drives. 17 seconds to boot on an old Asus P5Q with a Q6600 and most of that is actually the BIOS POST!
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0 Hidetb571 , 25 July 2013 20:34Are there any reliability comparison tables for SSDs