Samsung follows OCZ lead on large-sized SSD pricing

It's like a tiny glimpse into the future. OCZ has been pushing out some very aggressive deals into the market on large scale SSD – and now the big boys are following. The latest game of price-based kiss-chase is happening around the 240/256GB drives. Both Samsung and OCZ have something that the other side doesn't. KitGuru plays matchmaker to see which deal makes more sense.

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A TV can be sold as ‘HD Ready', without having to give you 1080p. It looks like a total cheat these days, but a few years back – when the TV glass was much more expensive – manufacturers would give you 720 progressive and, often, 1080 interlaced on an HD Ready TV.

With SATA III, you need to read the small print, because a deal can appear too good – offer too much value – but ultimately not be able to ‘deliver at the limit of what the technology is capable of.

While the advertising blurb for the Samsung 256GB 830 Series SSD says “Faster”, the reality is that the limits of SATA III will remain untouched by its 520MB/sec read and 400MB/sec write speeds. They are good, no doubt, but not ‘fast' in the true SSD sense of the word, because the advertised write speed is 20% slower than a competitor product like the OCZ's Agility 3 that we discussed yesterday.

What makes the eBuyer deal on a 240GB Samsung drive interesting, is that we're seeing a micro-cosmic view of what the future will look like:-

• Leading brand (OCZ), choosing to push a faster (500MB/sec write), but slightly smaller (240GB) drive offer into the market at £129
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• Major manufacturer (Samsung), countering by releasing a drive deal at the same price that has a little more memory (256GB), but slightly slower speeds (400MB/sec write)

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KitGuru says: This is where true competition works well for consumers. The smaller company trying harder, innovating away – while the bigger company releases deals that are equally tasty – but with a slightly different spin on the flavour. Long term, Samsung losing major supply contracts to someone like Apple, will create HUGE over production and could lead to the mother of all price wars. Wait for the Rick O'Shea.

Comment below or in the KitGuru forums.

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