Final Thoughts...

For the shy side of £300 it's a huge investment for very little performance gain, unless you have a very small amount of system memory, in which case I suggest you spend a fraction of the cost of an SSD on a memory upgrade instead. A Western Digital Raptor hard drive coupled with enough system memory will offer an overall better, and cheaper experience.

Why Samsung chose an ATA-66 interface rather than ATA-100 or ATA-133 is rather bizarre, but seeing as there is no cache implemented on the SSD and the total read speed is limited to just under ATA-66, it is likely the two have just been matched together. A SATA version at 150MBit/s probably won’t actually offer any extra performance, just a more common interface.

That being said the performance is almost always better than a 7200RPM hard drive, with certain aspects like boot times significantly so. However, for a few seconds less wait would you shell out six times more money for five times less space? Only those people who desire the latest $1000 CPUs and a couple of 8800 Ultras will be seriously considering an SSD, of which RAIDed Raptors might offer a more attractive proposition, certainly so from a bragging rights perspective.


The 2.5” size implies it’s intended for a mobile device and for this application it could become invaluable: no noise, far less power use, instant on, less heat and enough space to carry a full set of applications and OS. Your storage can still use an external USB drive, memory stick or even online, so for the extra features it is absolutely worth it.

We have seen a Sony VAIO VGN-TZ12VN notebook with an SSD drive in it (review published on Trusted Reviews this Monday 23rd July) and it’s not until you use it do you realise how much hard drives are holding back notebooks: it’s lighter and has a very long battery life for its size, it’s absolutely silent and for a change doesn’t get hot under one palm, but you do still have to suffer the underside being toasty. As we’ve shown, the performance exceeds that of a 7200RPM drive in many areas so it’s certainly something to keep an eye out for. Yes it'll be expensive, but then again aren't all Sony Vaios?

Article Addition: Respective Power Consumption.

The SSD uses barely any energy compared to the desktop drives, which both use a similar amount of power.


So for mobile devices, look for one already using it or if you’re upgrading a recent notebook make sure it’s SATA. As far as we’re concerned with performance desktops, the alternatives still offer better value and a performance then the SSD. It’ll be some time yet before a solid state drive is suitable for desktop systems but considering the rampage of Flash development, it shouldn’t be too much longer for us.

Desktop Use

• Performance
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• 8/10

• Features
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 6/10

• Value
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 3/10

• Overall
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 6/10

Mobile Use

• Performance
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• 8/10

• Features
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• 10/10

• Value
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 6/10

• Overall
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• 8/10

What do these scores mean?