The big trend in SSD releases in recent years has been an ever increasing storage volume at an ever shrinking price point. As the cost-per-gigabyte has dropped, the size of the drives have exploded, with some now sporting multiple terabytes and performance on new standards like M.2 far in excess of anything that could be achieved a few years ago.
But that doesn’t mean the market has entirely moved on, or indeed that smaller SSDs aren’t still a viable business option. Samsung is perhaps looking to prove that mentality with its new line of 750 series SSDs which have now been released in Japan.
The new drives come in two sizes: 120GB and 250GB. Both use traditional 2D NAND memory and the same MGX controller that Samsung put in its 850 EVO and 850 Pro solid state drives. They also utilize the traditional SATA III 6Gb/s interface.
Specifications of the drives are quite typical of their type, with sequential read/write speeds of 540MB/s and 520 MB/s respectively. Random (queue depth 1) QD1 reads are 10,000 IOPS, and 94,000 for QD32. QD1 and QD32 write speeds are listed as 35,000 and 88,000 IOPS, respectively.
It also supports encryption standards like AES 256-bit FDE, and comes with a three year warranty.
Although not likely to set any records, there is a reasoning to the release of this very typical SSD product. As Toms puts it, this is Samsung’s way of having available products in the entry level SSD market, which is going to continue to fall in price — likely into the $40-50 range for 250GB during Black Friday sales.
By creating an economical SSD solution, Samsung is ensuring that it can have a presence in the ultra-low-cost solid state market, without needing to compromise pricing on its more premium and performance focused drives higher up the price scale.
