If the idea of a thin and light computer excites you, but you can’t part with having less than 256GB of storage, a new set of drives from Samsung could make it easy for your current laptop to have your cake and eat it too.
Destined to replace the 2.5mm notebook hard drives that many of us have, the new range of solid-state drives will range from 120GB to 1024GB, also known as the 1TB mark, a storage size not normally seen on computers that come with solid-state drives.
Aside for bigger storage sizes, the new drives include faster write performance, with as much as 520MB per second write speed on offer from the 250GB model and above, while the smaller 120GB solid-state drive manages 410MB/s.
“After accelerating the growth of the SSD market by last year’s launch of entry-level high-performance SSDs, we are introducing much faster SSDs with up to 1TB capacities offering consumers a wider range of choices,” said Young-Hyun Jun, Executive Vice President for Memory Sales and Marketing at Samsung Electronics.
Not all computers will be able to take the solid-state drives, however, as these sit in the slot that a current notebook hard drive would normally take up, meaning ultra-thin machines currently relying on the memory soldered to motherboards won’t be able to plug one of these in.
Instead, only computers that allow you to replace the hard drive will be able to take one of these drives, a move that will deliver better battery life thanks to the static memory on offer and lack of moving parts.
You will need a pretty penny if you plan to move beyond the 500GB size, however, with prices for the new Samsung 840 Evo solid-state drives set to $179 for the 120GB, $289 for the 250GB, $599 for the 500GB, $849 for the 750GB, and just shy of a thousand ($999) for Samsung’s 1TB solid-state drive.
The drives are heading to computer stores now, and will come with a three year warranty.
