14 DAY TRIAL // Solid state drives are infamous for their very high prices compared to hard disk drive units, but SSD makers have been doing what they can to address the situation. As it happens, Angelbird managed to create some of the best entry-level SSDs ever.
It's quite impressive for a company that is not as well-known as most other SSD makers. Sure, Angelbird is a big enough name in Austria, but it's barely made an imprint in the rest of the world.
Regardless, the company has launched the SSD wrk, powered by the SATA 6.0 Gbps interface and made of multi-level cell NAND flash chips from Micron (MLC).
The chips are interconnected and managed by an SMI 2246EN controller, which can reach read speeds of 563 MB/s and sustained writing speeds of 450 MB/s.
Sure, that won't be possible on the 128 GB and 256 GB models, but the 512 GB drive, at least, should be able to work at that speed and 72,000 IOPS 4K random performance. The access time is 0.1 ms.
All the while, the price doesn't go much higher than $299.99 / £191.63 / €223. By comparison, there are plenty of 500 GB SSDs of half that amount, or more.
Since we are on the subject, the 128 GB drive has a price of $99.99 / £59.96 / €74, while the 256 GB unit sells, or will sell, soon, for $159.99 / £99.96 / €120.
All three solid state drives have a thickness of only 7 mm, a MTBF of 2 million hours, integrated EDC and ECC error correction capabilities, overvoltage and ESD protection features, and overload protection, plus TRIM (for constantly clearing deleted sectors, preserving performance over time) and EMS (electromagnetic shielding).
All in all, the Angelbird SSD wrk solid state drives should be more than decent storage upgrades for your laptop. If you have an HDD you want to replace, you can use one of these things to swap it, gaining a massive performance boost in the process.
The much lower energy needs will even do you the favor of extending battery life. The 128 GB drive only needs 0.25W, while the 512 GB drive can live off a mere 2.98W.
If you buy an Angelbird SSD wrk, you are allowed to download System Reflection backup software, Parallels Desktop virtualization software, and Pure Mix video tutorial software. The video below will provide some “behind the scenes” information about the new storage devices.
