We’ve seen budget SSD drives starting to appear for a few months now, but while the price was cheap the performance was less than great. Now Crucial is changing that with the introduction of the 2.5″ RealSSD C300 range.
Available in 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB models, it’s the 64GB that really shines as the best value. A drive big enough to easily support an OS coupled with read speeds of 355MB/s and write speeds of 75MB/s. The price? $149.99.
Although still significantly more expensive than standard hard drive pricing, Crucial has brought the overall price of SSD drives down with the C300. Only two months ago we were talking about Super Talent offering a Value range of SSD drives. In that case the 64GB model cost $175, but only offered 150MB/s read and 100MB/s write speeds. OCZ also has a budget SSD available called the Onyx. It’s 32GB, costs $99, but only manages 125MB/s read and 75MB/s write speeds.
The write speeds and the price of the C300 range increase significantly if you opt for one of the larger drives:
RealSSD C300 64GB
Read: 355MB/s
Write: 75MB/s
Price: $149.99
RealSSD C300 128GB
Read: 355MB/s
Write: 140MB/s
Price: $399.99
RealSSD C300 256GB
Read: 355MB/s
Write: 215MB/s
Price: $749.99
Each drive supports SATA 6Gb/s, is backwards compatible with SATA 3Gb/s, and comes with a 3-year warranty
Read more at the Crucial Press Release
http://www.crucial.com/uk/company/media/releases/pressrelease.aspx?id=FC3B9854EFA2B68E
As a boot drive the 64GB SSD sounds like the best solution yet. It’s expensive, but nowhere near as expensive as a 64GB drive was a few months ago. You also get the power and heat efficiencies over a standard hard drive making this ideal for laptops or nettops.
The 128GB and 256GB drive bump the price up way too high. Why should double the size cost more than double the price? So, for the moment, the 64GB is the only drive worth considering in my opinion. The next breakthrough will be a 128GB budget price, which in turn will mean 64GB performance drives come down below $100.
Tags: c300, crucial, RealSSD, SSD, storage
