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Best SSDs For The Money: August 2013

Best SSDs For The Money: August 2013
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The SSD market is never boring, is it? In the last month we reviewed Samsung's new 840 EVO, set up a deathmatch against Crucial's entire M500 family, and previewed an upcoming processor from Silicon Motion. Our recommendations reflect all of that action.

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: Too Much Pork For Just One Spork

Almost immediately after last month's edition of this column went live, our review of Samsung's 840 EVO followed. We knew it was coming, but that didn't end up mattering much. The 840 EVO wasn't going to be available until mid-August anyway. Now, as the mid-range SSD hits shelves, buyers in some parts of the consumer segment have interesting choices to make.

For example, if you're in the market for almost a terabyte of fast flash-based storage, Crucial's 960 GB M500 gets direct competition from the 840 EVO's 1000 GB model. Both drives give prospective buyers about a terabyte of capacity for less than the price of some 512 GB-class drives. Not too shabby. The 840 EVO also sells as a 750 GB model, splitting the 480 GB and 1 TB price points. But if you're going to go big, you might as well go all the way, we think.

Of course, the 840 EVO introduces other compelling value-adds, including the clearly marketing department-named RAPID and Turbo Write features. Turbo Write is an emulated SLC mode that addresses the prior 840's weak write performance. Meanwhile, RAPID is a caching technology enabled by Samsung's NVELO acquisition. Yes, we're still dealing with NAND that stores three bits of information per cell rather than two. But I've learned to go with the flow, and I'm even starting to like this bit of heresy we call triple-level cell flash. Cell phones? Cameras? USB drives? Sure, use that cheaper TLC stuff. SSDs, though? It's taken some convincing.

I'm a traditionalist, after all. Three-bit-per-cell NAND represents everything that I suspected might be wrong with SSDs of the future. Lower endurance, scaled-back performance, and awkward pricing were all once solid-state Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Samsung's 840 started me down the path of reconsidering my hardline position. But the EVO really turned it around. Let's face reality: TLC-based SSDs are going to become more common in the future. Thus far, Samsung's demonstrations of the technology have proven reliable. It likely helps that the 840 EVO is using Samsung flash and a Samsung controller, making up for whatever shortcomings it suffers with a spiffy feature set, better performance, and a handful of enhancements to the Magician software.

So, what about the future, then?

Companies like Silicon Motion are making new controllers, hoping to find a niche between the twin juggernauts of Marvell and LSI SandForce. Silicon Motion's SM2246EN is designed to make the best of not just MLC flash, but also three-bit-per-cell NAND as well. We haven't yet had the opportunity to test a TLC-equipped sample with the company's processor, but our recent look at a reference drive with Toshiba's Toggle-mode flash certainly impressed us.

There are other big forces in solid-state storage converging relentlessly, too. You may have heard of the new M.2 interface. This is just a connector intended to supplant SATA and mSATA, especially where notebooks are concerned. It allows thinner, more spacious storage in tight spaces. You're going to see different implementations, though, including M.2-based drives with a SATA controller (basically achieving something similar to mSATA) and M.2-based drives with native PCI Express controllers. They're totally different, except for the way they attach.

The push to cut power is surfacing in other aspects of storage, too. It used to be that simply shifting from a mechanical hard disk to a SSD got you back to idle faster, saving battery life. Now, with Intel's mobile Haswell architecture, compatible SSDs can enter into a crazy-low power state called DevSlp (short for Device Sleep). A drive that supports DevSlp can be ready for I/O in 50 ms or less, while consuming a fraction of its active idle wattage. SandForce claims its DevSlp-capable controllers are using just microwatts, instead of milliwatts. That might not sound like a huge deal (and it isn't, in the grand scheme of platform power). But every little bit helps, as we know.

Storage Reviews For The Month:

Hands-On With Silicon Motion's New SSD Controller
SSD Deathmatch: Crucial's M500 Vs. Samsung's 840 EVO
Tom's Hardware's AMA With Samsung, In Its Entirety
Seagate Laptop Ultrathin HDD Review: 500 GB In 5 mm Of Space

HGST Travelstar 7K1000 Review: A 1 TB Notebook Drive At 7200 RPM
Samsung 840 EVO SSD: Tested At 120, 250, 500, And 1000 GB

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.
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  • 1 Hide
    kulwant , 21 September 2013 12:48
    What about the very decent Kingston 60GB SSDNow V300's selling for £44.99 and 120GB for £64.98?
    After getting burnt with dodgy firmwares from OCZ and even Intel, I don't touch anything other than Corsair, Kingston or Samsung nowadays.