Solid State Drives (in short, SSD) are a lot preferable compared to the conventional hard drives, in terms of performance. However, they haven’t gained a lot of traction because of their rather steep price-points. The good news is that SSD prices have been continuously declining, and over the last quarter alone prices have fallen by 40% to 50%.
SSDs are a lot faster and secure as compared to the regular hard drives. Until now, consumers have either shied away from SSDs because of their high prices, or used them only to boot the operating systems, which requires a rather small drive.
But SSD vendors seem bent on making their products affordable for the users. Over the last one year or so, the prices of SSDs have been declining steadily. Back in the start of 2011, SSDs cost quite a fortune and were too pricey to be used by average users. But now, the prices have come down to less than a dollar per gigabyte, which makes them very cheap in comparison.
Generally, the rule is that the larger the size of an SSD drive is, the greater will be the drop in its price over the last quarter. For instance, OCZ’s Octane 256GB had its price eroded by 55%, which is a huge drop. OCZ Vertex 3 120GB witnessed a price drop of 53% and Octane 128GB came down by 50%.
In comparison, Intel 320 Series 40GB SSD lost its price point by a mere 3%. If we view the trends over a larger period of time, it’s easy to recognize that SSD vendors have shed a major part of their prices. For instance, OCZ Vertex 3 240 GB cost a whopping $500 back in January this year. But now, it’s price has undergone a steep decline and reached less than $200!
Although Intel hasn’t significantly dropped the prices of its SSDs over the past few months, it is no longer a major contender in the arena. On the contrary, the company has few offerings, some of them as recent as August this year.
Corsair may not have dropped the prices of its drives too much, but its drives are already relatively cheaper compared to other vendors. For instance, while OCZ’s Vortex 240 GB cost $500 back in January, Corsair’s Force Series 3 240 GB drive cost a little over $300 back then. And now, its price has tumbled down to less $200.
In all, the prices of the SSDs have been slashed significantly over the past few months so much so that a majority of these drives now cost less than a dollar per gigabyte. For instance, OCZ’s Agility 4 256 GB costs a mere $0.67 per GB, probably being the cheapest offering on the market in terms of price to volume ratio. Agility 3 120 GB is also cheap costing $0.70 per gigabyte. Measuring by the per gigabyte yardstick, most of the cheaper SSDs are indeed offerings from OCZ.
The image below will give you a vivid idea of where the cost per gigabyte of SSDs from different vendors stand.
Source: Tech Report
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