Mushkin debuts 480GB mSATA SSD

Mushkin has announced what it's calling a “world's first,” with its new 480GB mSATA SSD, designed to save on space while giving Ultrabooks a serious performance boost.

Joining the Atlas family of mSATA drives, this new just-shy-of-500GB offering, features a SATA III interface, TRIM and S.M.A.R.T support and all the other bangs and whistles you'd expect from a modern SSD. Thanks to its small form factor and the use of an mSATA interface, it's not much bigger than a credit card, so will likely see use in Ultrabook form factors with system builders. However those out there who have maxed out their notebook in terms of storage space but want to keep the speed of a SATA III SSD, now have a pretty solid upgrade option.

Set for release in early 2013, this mSATA SSD will be Priced at $499 (£310). It's not a cheap purchase, but is representative of the falling price of SSDs across the board, where 100GB offerings can be found for around £70.

“We're excited to present our latest Atlas 480GB mSATA solid state drive, demonstrating once again Mushkin's consistent ability to combine top performance, functionality, capacity, and low-power innovation,” said Brian Flood, director of product development at Mushkin. “Keeping z-height as low as possible and managing to fit eight NAND flash chips and a controller on a mSATA PCB was no easy feat, but now capacity-hungry Ultrabook and notebook users can go beyond the 256GB mSATA barrier.”

KitGuru Says: Not a bad little buy this one. Not so much use for the desktop users out there, but those with close to full notebooks might want to take a look.

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