Intel’s First SSD is Hot on Performance and Cool on Pricing
Intel is entering the storage market with an ambitious X25-M solid-state drive capable of 250MB/s sustained reads and 70MB/s writes. The drive is so fast that it employs Native Command Queuing (originally designed to hide mechanical hard drive latency) to compensate for latency the SSD encounters in host systems.
Intel lists the idle power consumption of the X25-M at 0.06W and the “typical workload” power consumption as 150mW. This is far lower than any conventional hard drive and relatively comparable to other SSDs. While the X25-M isn’t the world’s fastest storage device across the board, it is among the fastest. And in the areas that it does dominate, it does so unbelievably well. The other great thing? You’ve got one of the world’s fastest hard drives, and it can fit in your notebook.
What Intel did with the X25-M is show the world what is possible with MLC flash. You get better than SLC performance, at lower than SLC prices. Despite that, the absolute only thing that bothers me about Intel’s X25-M is the price. Although Intel is totally justified in pricing the X25-M at $595, I was hoping for pricing inline with the JMicron based MLC SSDs.
At $300 – $400 this would be a no brainer for any enthusiast, and honestly even at $595 it’s worth considering if you have other drives for data storage.
