Price of SSDs Dropping Fast: Intel X25-M Now Under $370

Time flies in the SSD business.  Just last Spring, a 32GB Samsung SSD cost well over $800 online. Then the low-cost drives from memory-makers like OCZ, Patriot, Transcend, and SuperTalent started to hit the market and, though most of these did not have the best write and multi-tasking peformance, they helped drive prices down. For the past several months, you’ve been able to get a 32GB value SSD for around $100, sometimes less and 64GB for less than $200.

Now, the 80GB Intel X-25M, which is probably the fastest SSD readily available to consumers today,  has dropped significantly. Intel recently cut its wholesale cost per thousand units to $390 and apparently some retailers are selling the drive for even less as we found it on sale for $369. That’s still a lot more than most consumers want to pay for an 80GB drive, but it’s getting close to the sweet spot where consumers cna justify the upgrade.

Based on our conversations with SSD makers, we believe the sweet spot for massive adotption is 120GB or more of high-performance SSD (strong read and write speeds) for under $250, preferably under $200.  At that price, consumers and businesses can either dramatically improve the performance of a 2-3 year old notebook enough to extend its life for another year or two or pop an aftermarket drive into a new notebook or netbook that doesn’t come with an SSD.

Based on some of the announcements we’ve seen, we’re coming very close to that $250 for 120GB price point on a whole host of drives. The latest price drop on the X25-M move us that much closer.