According to Trendforce, a bean counter for the storage industry, a 512GB SSD is now priced on par with a 500GB HDD for laptops, which is about the same price as a 256GB SSD six months ago. Like many computer components, SSDs were in great demand during the height of the pandemic when the work-from-home trend peaked. Therefore, due to the law of supply and demand, SSD pricing was not high. However, we, who have traveled through 2022, trend force observed a dramatic drop in SSD demand and prices. TrendForce also has other interesting observations and forecasts on SSD market and bit growth, high-capacity SSDs, and laptop connection rates.
The average capacity of consumer SSDs is just over 500GB this year. One of the reasons behind this phenomenon is that the 512GB SSD is about the same price as his 2.5-inch 500GB HDD, which is similar in price to his 256GB SSD six months ago.
After looking at the prices of some popular SSDs on Amazon, I found the following:
|
product |
half a year ago price |
today’s price |
|
Western Digital 500GB WD Blue SA510 SATA |
$54.90 |
$39.99 |
|
Crucial P3 500GB PCIe Gen3 3D NAND NVMe M.2 SSD |
$55.20 |
$39.99 |
|
SAMSUNG 980 PRO 500GB PCIe NVMe Gen4 |
$105.50 |
$95.50 |
Is a 500GB SSD cheaper than a 2.5″ HDD of comparable capacity?
The best markdown observed in the table above is around 30%. However, it turns out that there are indeed a number of 250GB SATA and NVMe SSDs that sold for around $50 six months ago (e.g. WD_BLACK 250GB SN770 NVMe, Crucial MX500 250GB 3D NAND SATA).
And if you want a high-performance 2.5-inch 7,200 RPM HDD alternative, Amazon’s price is $37.99 (Seagate BarraCuda Pro (opens in new tab) SATA 500GB) and $59.27 (Western Digital WD Black WD5000LPSX (opens in new tab) SATA 500GB). However, a slower 5400RPM 2.5 inch 500GB SATA HDD is available at a much lower price (under $20).
According to TrendForce, Windows licensing is the main obstacle preventing the average capacity of built PCs from reaching 1 TB or more. Windows licensing costs for PCs increase with device specifications, such as SSD storage capacity. Therefore, it will be some time before the cost of 1TB+ SSDs falls to justify their deployment in economy or value series devices where every penny counts.
Laptops are becoming less and less likely to have HDD storage. TrendForce says that by 2022, 92% of laptops sold will have his SSD. According to the company, his SSD installation rate in laptops will reach 96% next year, leaving HDDs even more marginalized.
Microsoft is said to encourage OEMs to adopt UFS solutions for entry-level computers with low storage capacity. 128GB SSDs are becoming increasingly scarce, but the recent drop in SSD and NAND prices has shown OEMs to be unenthusiastic about moving to UFS, especially since the faster UFS 3.1 is currently not supported on Wintel machines. means
If you’re in the storage market, check out our latest SSD and hard drive best deals feature.
