Amazon just launched a host of new deals to mark the beginning of Black Friday proper, including a very tempting-looking SSD: the SanDisk SSD Plus 960GB, providing a terabyte of storage for just £116. That’s an awesome deal, working out to 12p per gigabyte – one of the lowest prices we’ve ever seen for an SSD of this size, in fact. SanDisk is also a trusted name in the flash storage space, and the SSD Plus has remained popular since it arrived in 2016. However, this deal isn’t as good as it appears – and we reckon you can do better.
The SanDisk SSD Plus 960GB drive is a big one to be sure, and it’s even got a bunch of five star reviews on Amazon. However, this SSD is only really better than a mechanical hard drive when it comes to speed; compared to almost any other SSD on the market, including many budget models, it comes up short. In tests, its controller was found to just not be up to snuff, with performance that quickly drops below its stated maximum speeds. Therefore, we recommend spending a little more to get a drive that will last longer and provide a much more consistent boost to performance. With that in mind, here are three 1TB alternatives to the SanDisk Plus at various price points.
The £130 Crucial MX500 SATA SSD 1TB is perhaps the most obvious option, offering way better performance than the SanDisk drive at only a slightly higher price. The drive has a good reputation for longevity and reliability, and provides consistently faster performance thanks to a more advanced controller onboard. This drive is available on Amazon at £136, but it’s cheaper at £130 with free shipping from Crucial’s own site.
The £130 Western Digital Blue M.2 SSD 1TB is another good option. It’s a very affordable yet modern M.2 SSD with consistently faster speeds than SanDisk’s drive. It’s rated up to 560MB/s reads and 530MB/s writes, which approaches the very limits of the SATA interface. You’ll need a free M.2 slot to use this drive in your laptop or desktop PC, but it’s a great option that costs only a little bit more than the SanDisk Plus and is much better regarded.
Our final alternative is the £117 ADATA SU650 SSD 960GB. This drive came out a year after the SU650 and has a better controller than the relatively ancient SanDisk SSD Plus drive. That allows it to be moderately faster in terms of sequential reads and writes, and way faster in random reads and writes – the sort of operations that are commonly encountered when loading games or performing other productivity tasks. So it’s better – and it’s also only £1 more expensive than the SanDisk drive so you’re still getting a bargain.
Ultimately, the choice is up to you – certainly, plenty of people have bought a SanDisk SSD Plus 960GB drive and absolutely loved it. But from our point of view, there are better drives out there for only slightly higher prices – so why not go with one of these instead?
There are plenty more Black Friday deals kicking around. Check out Digital Foundry’s Black Friday highlights for November 22nd, or go directly to our picks for the best Black Friday deals on headsets, mice and keyboards. If you’re looking to build or upgrade a PC, we’ve got you covered with the best Black Friday graphics cards, discounted Black Friday CPUs and Black Friday SSD deals. And finally, if you prefer your systems a little more pre-assembled, we’ve got some good Black Friday gaming laptops too.
Be the first to comment