What to Buy on Amazon : Solid State Drives (SSD)

One of the most popular items, at least in the Computer and Accessories category, are Solid State Drives, otherwise known as SSD. Now, for the layman, SSD are straight forward drop-in replacement for your existing Hard Disk Drive (HDD). SSD uses flash as the storage medium, as oppose to a spinning disc in a traditional HDD. As a result, it offers a much lower access latency which results in a huge boost in performance most of the time.

There are currently many SSD vendors, offering a myriad of combinations of controllers and capacity. However, in my opinion, there are only 4 which are worthy of consideration. They are

• Intel
• Crucial
• Samsung
• Kingston

The main reason is that Amazon offers AmazonGlobal Saver for SSDs from these manufacturers. One thing to take note that SSDs today are very much capable and you won't notice any performance difference between the different models in your everyday home and office type of workload. If you do a little bit of searching, you will see that all of them performs differently and have different controller and flash characteristics. In my opinion, these are academic in nature and I must re-iterate that you will most likely not see nor feel any difference between them. In short, just buy the cheapest, but do read on for some other pointers.

The best value for money capacity at the moment is the 240GB/250GB/256GB version. Let's take a brief look at the SSDs offered by these manufacturers.

Intel 530 Series 240GB 2.5-Inch Internal Solid State Drive (Reseller Kit) SSDSC2BW240A4K5
This is a pretty recent model and it comes in 2 variants, the bare drive or the Reseller Kit (featured here). The bare drive, as the name implies, is just the drive alone and is not eligible for AmazonGlobal. The Reseller Kit version is another story. At the moment it qualifies for free shipping (unless the price drops below $125) so you don't have to 'pad' your cart to qualify. Intel offers a massive 5-year international warranty on these drives. According to their warranty statement, all you need to do is call the Intel Customer Service in your region to request an RMA. The Reseller Kit also comes with a 9.5mm spacer, a SATA cable and a 3.5" to 2.5" bracket.

I personally bought this and bootcamp off the Thunderbolt connector on my MacBook Air. I also have Intel's older model, the X25-M G2 80GB and the 320 series 160GB. My experience is very positive with Intel.

Samsung Electronics 840 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5-Inch SATA III Single Unit Version Internal Solid State Drive MZ-7TE250BW
Samsung offers 3 versions of the 840-series SSDs. The standard 840, the 840 EVO and the 840 PRO. The 840 and 840 EVO are priced similarly but the 840 EVO out performs the 840 just about in every single benchmarks. The 840 PRO commands a higher price premium and for the extra performance it offers, I don't think it's value-for-money when used in an office or home environment.

Another thing to take note is that the 840 and 840 EVO uses a 'one of its kind' type of flash, known as TLC. It stands for Tri-Level Cell, as opposed to MLC (Multi-Level Cell) or SLC (Single-Level Cell). In theory, a TLC flash will wear out faster than an MLC flash, all things equal. I strongly believe that by the time the flash is worn out, you'll be looking at a better, faster and cheaper drive. In other words, whether it's TLC or MLC, it doesn't matter in reality.

Samsung does not provide international warranty unfortunately. If you need to RMA the drive, you'll have to send it all the way back to Samsung USA. It should cost you about $10-$15 SGD to send it back via registered post.

Crucial M500 240GB SATA 2.5-Inch 7mm (with 9.5mm adapter) Internal Solid State Drive CT240M500SSD1
I do not have any experience with Crucial drives. However, the M500 series has got good reviews, is very price competitive (it's the cheapest of the lot at the time of writing) and ships for free to Singapore. RMA requires you send the drive back to Taiwan and it cost lesser than sending it back to the US. It comes with a 9.5mm spacer as well.

Kingston HyperX 3K 240 GB SATA III 2.5-Inch 6.0 Gb/s Solid State Drive SH103S3/240G
Kingston is also a name brand which offers good performance SSDs at relatively competitive price. If you have a grudge against the other 3 manufacturers, then you can consider this model. I do not believe Kingston offers any international warranty and any RMA will have to go back to the US.

Now, if 240GB/250GB/256GB is not your cup of tea, let me introduce the massive 960GB version of the M500

 

In all honesty, the 960GB is way overkill. For your data, like your movies and music, it's more cost effective to store them on traditional HDD.