Grab a 1TB SATA SSD for £46 with this Amazon US import
Plus - what's the best cut-price NVMe SSD in the UK right now?
Buying American imports on Amazon UK is one of the best ways to get a steep discount without resorting to lesser-known sellers, and occasionally you find a deal that is streets ahead of the nearest comparable price in Blighty. That's the case with this deal, where you can pick up Lexar's NS100 SATA SSD in a beautiful 1TB capacity for just £46.
That's a super low price for what is by all accounts quite a reasonable drive, with read speeds up to 550MB/s, write speeds up to 500MB/s, TLC NAND flash memory and a DRAM-less design.
For context, we'd normally expect to pay at least £60 for a good-quality SSD of this size, so getting one for under £50 is a bargain. It's not one of the fastest drives available, with NVMe options offering significantly faster sequential speeds for not that much more money, but if you're after a SATA drive because that's what your laptop will take or you've run out of NVMe drives, this ain't a bad choice!
If you did want an NVMe drive though, what's the best choice? I'd probably highlight this Crucial P3 1TB NVMe model for £58, which offers better sequential speeds (up to 3500MB/s reads and 3000MB/s writes) and significantly better random speeds (650K/700K IOPS random reads/writes). It also lacks a DRAM cache and uses QLC NAND, so expect relatively poor longevity and sustained performance. For most uses, this isn't an issue, but the NS100 above might be the better choice for sustained writes!
What do you think of these drives? Is it worth considering these budget options for media/game storage or do you require a higher standard of SSD for your builds? Let me know in the comments below!