The Intel 600p SSD is one of the more affordable M.2 PCIe x4 based NVMe drives on the market. It uses an SMI controller paired with Intel's own 3D TLC flash. Despite the relatively low synthetic results, our real-life testing shows that the drive is a decent choice for typical consumer workloads.
ADATA's Gammix S10 SSD is built using a Silicon Motion controller paired with 3D TLC flash. The SSD is cooled by a sexy red heatsink that not only looks pretty but also keeps the drive cooler than other NVMe SSDs we tested before. Priced at $210, it's one of the most affordable PCIe x4 drives on the market.
The Team Group Cardea Zero is a high-performance M.2 2280 SSD using the PCI-Express x4 3.0 interface. Sequential reads reach almost 3000 MB/s, which is amazing. Writes are good, too, with nearly 1200 MB/s consistently thanks to the use of MLC flash chips, which don't suffer from TLC's write hole.
ADATA's SX8000 SSD uses a high-performance PCIe x4 3.0 interface in the M.2 2280 form factor. During testing, the drive delivered excellent performance results, which, combined with the excellent price of $220, make this an excellent choice if you want to join the NVMe crowd.
Today, Crucial released their new MX500 Series of SSDs. The new lineup is built using 64-layer 3D TLC NAND made by Micron, Crucial's parent company. Unlike previous models, an SMI controller is used, which delivers good performance that actually feels very much like that of an MLC drive.
The Crucial MX300 2 TB is the biggest SSD in the company's lineup. It provides a staggering 2050 GB of capacity, which should be plenty for everyone. Thanks to its good performance and outstanding price of 27 cents per GB, this is the drive you want if you need tons of fast storage.
The ADATA SU900 sticks to proven MLC flash chips in a market where most of the budget drives are TLC, with low sustained write performance and low endurance. In our review, we see good performance results that are on par with competing drives from Samsung and Crucial.
Crucial's new BX300 SSD is not only affordable, but also impresses with excellent performance that's right up there with the best SATA drives in our test group. The secret sauce is clearly the use of MLC flash, which offers better write performance than TLC, lasts longer, and is trusted by users.
Crucial's MX300 introduces TLC flash to the MX Series. We tested the 750 GB version, which delivers decent performance at incredible pricing of only 23 cents per gigabyte. Performance per dollar is also fantastic, claiming a top spot in our charts.
OCZ's new VX500 SSD is built around a Toshiba controller paired with Toshiba 15 nanometer MLC flash chips. The drive offers excellent performance at even better pricing, making it a great candidate if you want to stay away from TLC drives, but don't want to break the bank.
Angelbird's Wings PX1 adapter lets you install M.2 SSDs in the motherboard's PCI-Express slots. This approach unlocks full bandwidth for older chipsets. The adapter also comes with a nice metal heatsink that prevents thermal throttling on high-performance M.2 SSDs like the Samsung 950 Pro.
OCZ's Trion 150 is one of the most affordable SSDs on the market today, with only 27 cents per gigabyte. Performance has also been improved significantly over the Trion 100, which makes the Trion 150 an excellent candidate for a low-cost system upgrade to boost performance.
Crucial's BX200 SSD comes at an incredible price point Micron's new triple-layer-cell (TLC) flash chips make possible. In our testing, the drive delivers decent performance, which, combined with pricing, results in a leading price/performance position for the BX200.
The Toshiba HK3R2 is an entry-level enterprise SSD that has been built around Toshiba's own controller and NAND chips. With its 960 GB capacity, it offers plenty of storage for all business applications, and our MySQL database testing reveals excellent performance in read-heavy scenarios.
OCZ's new Trion 100 SSD is built around brand-new TLC NAND chips from Toshiba, using a Toshiba TC58 controller. Thanks to TLC technology, the drive competes with Crucial BX100 in pricing, which is less than 40 cents per gigabyte.
Kingston's new HyperX Savage 240 GB is built around a Phison controller using 19 nanometer flash chips. With a price of only $120 for the 240 GB version, it sits right on the magic $0.50-per-GB mark.
Intel's new 750 Series SSD is a technological marvel. It is built on an 18-channel controller using a PCI-Express x4 3.0 interface with the NVMe protocol. This provides transfer rates of well over 1 GB/s, which clearly impresses. With a price of $1 per GB, the drive is also not prohibitively expensive.
OCZ's new Vector 180 adds power stability monitoring capability, which helps protect the drive's data in case of a power outage. OCZ has also announced a new SSD software suite, which is more user friendly and comes with additional features. The OCZ Vector 180 240 GB retails at $150.
Crucial's new BX100 SSD is a cost-optimized solid state drive that can be had for an ultra affordable price. Built around a Silicon Motion controller, it delivers fast, consistent performance that's just within 1% of the Crucial MX100.
Crucial's new MX200 SSD can utilize portions of its flash capacity in super-fast SLC mode, which makes it the fastest SSD we ever tested. Once the disk gets fuller, the drive automagically switches to MLC mode, block-by-block, all in the background, so you can maximize its disk-space usage.
Crucial's new MX100 SSD is super affordable, yet provides excellent performance that can easily compete with the big boys. It uses brand-new 16 nanometer flash chips from Micron, paired with a proven Marvell controller. Hands down the best SSD you can get!
Today, AMD enters the SSD market with their Radeon R7 SSD, which is built using OCZ technology. Using a Barefoot 3 controller and Toshiba 19 nanometer flash chips, the drive is designed for consumers and gamers alike. AMD has also extended the warranty of their R7 SSD to four years.
Angelbird is a young solid-state drive manufacturer from Austria. Their new SSD, wrk, is built on the Silicon Motion SM2246 controller which delivers good real-life performance in our testing. While a price of $300 for 512 GB won't shock the market these days, the drive is affordable overall.
Toshiba's new HG6 Series is an incremental update over the HG5d Series and claims the performance throne in our new real-life SSD benchmarking suite. Toshiba's latest model is also cheaper than the predecessor, which even makes it an excellent choice for value-oriented buyers.
Crucial's new M550 SSD is based on an updated version of the Marvell controller, which means it no longer uses overprovisioning: you get to use the whole capacity. In our real-life testing we also see a slight performance improvement, which is great, especially considering the M550's competitive pricing.
