For years, SSD prices have been extremely stable. Anyone looking to buy an SSD could rely on prices that hadn't changed much since launch. Sure, you'd see the occasional sale, but ongoing price drops for older discs were nowhere to be found.
Suddenly everything changed. SSD prices are dropping like a rock. Which give? Is now the best time to buy an SSD?
Using CamelCamel we can see that SSD prices have plunged for the top selling SSD on Amazon. The top seller, the Samsung EVO 860 500GB, is down 30% from its launch price, a drop of more than $50. If we look at a more recent stable price in the spring, the reader price is still down more than 10%.
Other popular readers are seeing similar declines. Over the past six months, the WD Blue 500GB SSD has lost $51, or 36%.
Most mainstream 2.5-inch SATA SSDs have dropped in price just as substantially, with some dipping even further. Even m.2 and NVMe devices, which have historically resisted price drops, show the same downward trend.
If you're still running your system from a spinning hard drive, you won't find a better time to buy. No matter what type of SSD you get, the performance increase will be noticeable and dramatic.
What if you have an older or smaller SSD that you want to upgrade? Now is also a good time to buy. SSD speed will increase with the latest technology, but only marginally. Maximum capacity will be the biggest difference between 32-layer and 64-layer 3D NAND, rather than speed. So if you want to upgrade from 256 GB to 1 TB, the market is full of offers.
If you have an SSD you're happy with or want to buy an SSD larger than 2TB, hold your horses. The same goes for users who need the fastest drives. Unless you want to create a RAID0 array from SSDs, wait until 64-layer SSDs hit the market and drop in price. If you dream of a 5TB SSD, that day is coming soon.
