SSDs – a buyers' guide

Credit: Notebook Check

Solid state drives are faster, consume less power & generate less heat than spinning platter drives. They are also more reliable, at least in read-heavy use-cases. Unfortunately, they remain more expensive. AnandTech has a buyers’ guide:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9799/best-ssds / holiday buyer's guide SSDs SSD prices dropped recommendations high-end SATA SSDs limit performance value segment market flood of drives TLC flash brought prices power performance penalties MLC drives Samsung holds clear lead transitions 3D NAND PCIe interfaces most significant development past year release many good drives Silicon Motion's SM2246EN controller paired with 1x nm MLC flash drives TLC taking over low-end segment SM2246EN drives performance high-end SATA SSDs typical consumer workloads best power efficiency measured prices match beat TLC drives other big shift market 120-128GB capacity class fading away many new models starting 240-256GB 128Gb NAND chips drives aren't large enough full performance modern SSD controllers capable 128GB drives carry increasingly steep premium price per GB 256GB 512GB drives priced very similarly sensible buy always move up 240+GB size prices best discounts baseline holiday deals compared drives SSD Bench database provide performance information comparisons performance enthusiast SATA drives Samsung 850 Pro SanDisk Extreme Pro drives recommended last year's holiday guide summer 2014 guide major competitors Samsung 850 Pro overall faster higher endurance rating hardware encryption support SanDisk Extreme Pro cheaper Samsung advantage 2TB model 4TB version Samsung third generation V-NAND value drives below $0.30/GB good deals $0.25/GB Crucial BX100 top recommendation budget drives best values any market segment TLC-based BX200 severely disappointing performance SM2246EN-based drive BX100 on sale best performance drives controller Mushkin Reactor cheapest 256GB 512GB models OCZ Arc 100 sticks low price better performance under very heavy workloads much better steady-state random write performance power management lacking record-setting efficiency SM2246EN drives laptops options consumer-oriented PCIe storage 950 Pro first PCIe M.2 Samsung officially released retail channel XP941 SM951 M.2 form factor most widely supported connector PCIe SSDs consumer space most consumer motherboards PCIe x4 slot take lanes away from the GPU U.2 connector SFF-8639 rare AHCI variant SM951 much better idle power consumption Samsung's NVMe drives broader compatibility AHCI over NVMe worth paying a little more warranty from Samsung 950 Pro PCIe form factor card Intel SSD 750 performs very well several benchmarks enterprise product significantly more expensive Samsung's NVMe drives performance client workloads doesn't justify premium selection limited smaller form factors drives carry a premium Samsung 850 EVO Crucial MX200 benchmark capacity 850 EVO lower idle power consumption MX200 better steady-state random write performance. average 850 EVO performs better benchmarked mSATA M.2 versions MX200 performance 2.5" versions small form factors SLC caching enabled 850 EVO 840 EVO 1TB mSATA drives 1TB M.2 version 850 EVO /