Solid State Drive Prices Steadily Dropping
Solid state drives (SSDs) may well supplant mechanical hard disk drives (HDDs) as the storage of choice one day, but two things need to happen first. Capacity needs to increase, and the cost of flash-based storage needs to come down. Both of those things are happening right before our highs.
Increasingly bigger SSDs are finding their way to the market place, and as a recent investigation shows, prices are declining at a remarkably rapid rate. Within the past several months, SSD prices have plummeted upwards of 60 percent in some cases, such as OCZ's Agility 3 line.
One of the most notable drops belongs to Corsair's M4 line, which has dropped 57-64 percent in the past year. In fact, according to the report, Crucial's 256GB M4 boasts the best bang-per-gigabyte at the moment, at $0.82 per gigabyte. There are more than half a dozen other models priced at under a buck per gigabyte (OCZ's Agility 3 240GB checks in at $0.86 per gigabyte, for example), and a handful of others that hover around the $1 to $1.20 per gigabyte mark.
Higher capacities tend to offer the best value, which is the way it should be, even if that wasn't always the case. The bottom line is, if you're interested in an SSD but haven't shopped one lately due to price, you should take another look; you might be surprised at what you find.
Increasingly bigger SSDs are finding their way to the market place, and as a recent investigation shows, prices are declining at a remarkably rapid rate. Within the past several months, SSD prices have plummeted upwards of 60 percent in some cases, such as OCZ's Agility 3 line.
One of the most notable drops belongs to Corsair's M4 line, which has dropped 57-64 percent in the past year. In fact, according to the report, Crucial's 256GB M4 boasts the best bang-per-gigabyte at the moment, at $0.82 per gigabyte. There are more than half a dozen other models priced at under a buck per gigabyte (OCZ's Agility 3 240GB checks in at $0.86 per gigabyte, for example), and a handful of others that hover around the $1 to $1.20 per gigabyte mark.
Higher capacities tend to offer the best value, which is the way it should be, even if that wasn't always the case. The bottom line is, if you're interested in an SSD but haven't shopped one lately due to price, you should take another look; you might be surprised at what you find.
