Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2008/09/30/super_talent_masterdrive_lx_launch/

Super Talent delivers SSDs for poor people

128GB for just under $300

By Austin Modine

Posted in Channel, 30th September 2008 21:46 GMT

Solid-state drives have a lot going for them. They're thinner, faster, more efficient and longer lasting than most traditional spinning hard disks — yet high prices keeps most folks steering well clear.

US Flash memory maker Super Talent Technology plans to mix things up by releasing a pair of SSDs this week that won't send customers to the poor house.

The MasterDrive LX line comes in 64GB and 128GB versions and will cost about $180 and $300 respectively. The 2.5-inch drives are built with NAND Flash and use a SATA-II 3Gbps interface.

At about $2.33 per gigabyte, they're relatively cheap compared to SSDs with a similar capacity.

The catch is they're certainly not the zippiest SSDs ever made. Both versions offer a max read speed of 100MB/s and a write speed of only 40MB/s. That actually puts them on par or below regular SATA drives. Strike one benefit of using SSDs, but it still leaves superior size, durability, and battery life — all good things to have for notebook storage.

Super Talent expects to begin shipping both models this week.