Intel Slashes Prices of Its SSDs

It appears that the SSD market continues to grow as more and more manufacturers are reducing the price tags of their high-end Solid State Drives. The latest to join this trend is Santa Clara, California-based Intel, which has just announced a considerable price drop for its 80GB X-25M SSD. The chip maker has reduced the cost of the aforementioned storage product by 34 percent, meaning that it is now available for a more affordable $390.

 

When Intel first released its 2.5-inch 80GB X24-M SSD, designed for the mainstream consumer market, the NAND Flash-based storage product was priced at $595 for quantities of up to 1000 units. Compared to that, the price drop Intel has just enabled is rather considerable, allowing more PC users to upgrade their notebook storage to a higher-performance storage solution. Also, Intel's X18-M and X25-M SSDs are already known for their high-performance capabilities.

 

As mentioned before, the price drop is considerable, but if you are patient enough, you can actually get the 80GB 2.5-inch Intel SSD for less than $390. For example, at Newegg, the 80GB version of Intel's X25-M SSD can be yours for $369, an additional $30 saving, compared to similar products.

 

Despite the price cut, most users would still be looking for an alternative solution, as SSDs are still priced considerably higher than most traditional hard disk drives on the market. Still, given the way things are evolving in the solid state drive industry, we might soon see SSDs drop at a more affordable price tag of about $200, or lower.

 

Currently, Intel's other models, the X-25M 160GB, X-25E 32GB and X-25E 64GB are set at $765, $415 and $795, respectively. Ultimately, you are left with the decision as to whether the new pricing of Intel's SSDs can enable you to take advantage of a higher-performance storage solution. On that note, we invite you to our discussion board to express your opinion.