Super Talent on Tuesday made another attempt to popularize solid-state drives (SSDs) by substantially slashing prices on cost-effective models. The supplier of memory components hopes that the new price-points will catalyze end-users to prefer SSDs to premium-class hard disk drives (HDDs).
Super Talent’s MasterDrive LX-series solid-state drives that are based on multi-level cell (MLC) flash memory and feature Serial ATA-300 interface are hardly the fastest on the market with up to 100MB/s sequential read speed and up to 40MB/s write speed, but their pricing will definitely attract attention. The recommended price for MasterDrive LX 64GB (60GB) is just $179, whereas 128GB (120GB) version costs $299. Both models will begin shipping this week.
“The MasterDrive LX is our most cost-effective SSD yet. However, we’ve made no compromises in quality and reliability”, said Joe James, director of marketing at Super Talent.
While the company did not reveal any meantime between failure figures for the MasterDrive LX products, it said that they feature integrated ECC, wear leveling and bad bit management functions to improve the reliability and lifespan of these SSDs.
Still, even the entry level solid state drives are more expensive compared to the highest end HDDs these days. For example, Western Digital VelociRaptor 150GB costs about $199, 33% less than Super Talent’s relatively affordable 128GB SSD. As a result, many computer enthusiasts are likely to stick with good-old hard disk drives and not migrate to flash-based storage devices just now.