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Patriot took aim at value conscious SSD buyers today by releasing the Torqx TRB SSD in 32Gb and 64Gb capacities which should strike hard with prices to lure those over the edge into the SSD universe. Our thoughts are that the movement of SSD enthusiasts that consider a SSD for boot and applications along with their hard drive for data, music, movies and pictures seems to be gaining strength.
The specs detail the 64Gb as having the newer JMicron JM616 controller which will provide speeds of 260MB/s seq read along with 115MB/s seq write while the 32Gb versions show speeds of 245MB/s read with 60MB/s write with the JM612 controller. Both drives have a 64MB DRAM cache and come with a 3 year warranty to which prices haven’t hit the streets yet.
PRICE UPDATE!!! We just received confirmation from Patriot that the 32Gb version will be a suggested retail price of $79.99 with the 64Gb at $119.99 and should be available on e-sites early next week.
Our thoughts are that we will start to see a significant segment of the consumer lean this way as there are many who don’t want to spend a great deal of money on a transition that they are not sure will justify the cost. Given the introduction of SSDs that we are starting to see under $75, along with the fact that many are discovering that there may be a number of alternative storage measures for systems and laptops, the introduction of such drives is a welcome thought with new buyers. We are seeing such things as DVDs swapped out of laptops for the original hard drive with the SSD being put into its place which is providing speed and capacity.
For those of you flinching at the low write speed of the 32Gb version, you might want to consider that the most visible improvement one sees in a solid state drive comes from the absolute blazing seek times compared to the hdd (90x faster on average). Since the seek times of all SSDs are 0.1-0.2ms, would you believe that the average consumer can really tell the difference between any SSD in normal use?