Best SSDs For The Money: March 2014

It's particularly easy to love SSDs when they're affordable. As the price per gigabyte of solid-state storage falls, it's easier for everyone to get in on the action. Thunderbolt is (slowly) gaining traction too, and we cover a new development from Asus.

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.

Best SSDs For The Money: March 2014

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.

March Updates: Awesome SSD Prices and Some Thunderbolt Love

If you're in the market for a new SSD, rejoice. The last month saw a number of popular drives fall to insane levels of affordability. The last time we bought a 240 GB M500 (back in 2013), it sold for more than $215. Today, that same repository is going for $127. Crazy. You'll find the 480 GB variant for $260, and the big 960 GB model goes for around $200 more. It's truly a golden age for fast, reliable solid-state storage.

Ever a thorn in Crucial's side, Samsung 840 EVO is also kicking around the M500's price points. Both mainstream families are comparable in most ways, though. 840 EVOs do offer a few additional gigabytes of usable space. Otherwise, you get TCG Opal 2.0 and eDrive support for data encryption on Windows 8.1. In our real-world tests, performance differences between the two brands are small. Samsung gets a small edge thanks to better read performance and emulated SLC caching to help compensate for its three-bit-per-cell MLC NAND.

Better still, SanDisk's superb Extreme II family of performance-oriented SSDs is priced aggressively, too. The 120 GB model is about as fast as any other 128 GB-class drive, while the 240 and 480 GB versions are simply overpowering, besting Samsung's formidable 840 Pro in a number of the metrics we hold dear. Kingston, Mushkin, and a few other vendors are offering some excellent values as well.

Intel's just-announced SSD 730-Series is comparatively expensive. But its heady speed and enterprise lineage appeal to the discerning enthusiast who is less price-sensitive than most. And not to be left out, Plextor is making moves in the performance-oriented segment. Its upcoming PCIe-based P6e should deliver stout performance a notch beyond what the 6 Gb/s SATA interface serves up in a svelte M.2 form factor, nestled in a half-height PCIe adapter for the desktop crowd. Look for our full review in the days to come.

If you're looking for external storage, the proliferation of Thunderbolt technology, together with these less expensive SSDs, is a happy coincidence. We're not expecting Thunderbolt to become a value-oriented interface. But for a certain type of customer, it's exactly what the doctor ordered as a replacement for FireWire. Moving massive media files, whether audio or video, for editing becomes trivial with the right Thunderbolt-based solution. When time is money, that price premium ends up paying for itself. And now that you have a choice between enclosures with or without bundled drives, there's always the option of building your own multi-SSD configuration. 

Perhaps the biggest issue is that Thunderbolt support on PCs is still relatively rare. Asus's Z87 Deluxe Quad boasts Thunderbolt 2 support. The company also has an interesting option for owners of Z87-Pro, Z87-PRO(V Edition), Z87-A, Z87-Plus, Sabertooth Z87, and Maximus VI Extreme motherboards in its ThunderboltEX PCIe card, which adds a single 10 Gb/s port. That handful of motherboards able to accommodate the card have a nine-pin header that connects to the ThunderboltEX. Expect to pay around $80 for the card if you want to add Thunderbolt to an existing machine. If you anticipate needing some high-speed external connectivity, and you're planning ahead, this is probably the most economical way to upgrade a platform down the road.

Storage Reviews For The Month:

Samsung 840 EVO mSATA Review: 120, 250, 500, And 1000 GB, Tested

The SSD 730 Series Review: Intel Is Back With Its Own Controller

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 of Intel's 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 $15 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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