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SSDs, or solid-state drives, were new technology less than a decade ago but have rapidly become the norm over the past few years. That’s simply because they’re much faster and more reliable than platter-based drives (thanks to the fact that SSDs have no moving parts that can wear down and break), but they’re still more expensive per gigabyte than standard HDDs, so a discount is always welcome. If you’re looking to expand your computer’s storage or you need a portable pocket-friendly solid-state drive and you’re on a budget, you’ve found the right place. We’ve got all the best cheap SSD deals of the month right here:
Best SSD deals
The WD Blue SN550 SSD is a cost-effective addition to any desktop PC build. Its slimline M.2 NVMe interface is roughly four times faster than standard SATA drives as well.
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For enthusiast PC builds and anyone else with more demanding storage needs, the Samsung 980 Pro is a fantastic high-end PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD with read/write speeds of up to 7,000/5,100MB/s.
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This top-rated SSD from lesser-known brand Silicon Power hits the perfect sweet spot in size and performance for any PC build in need of a bit more storage than most SSDs can deliver.
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If your storage needs are modest (or you’re pairing a solid-state system drive with a larger HDD), the 256GB Silicon Power internal SSD is an incredible value.
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For an external solid-state that’s both portable and rugged to survive life’s adventures, it doesn’t get much better than the SanDisk Extreme SSD with its shock- and water-resistant housing.
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Most SSDs not cutting it? The beefy 4TB Western Digital Blue internal drive gives you 4TB of solid-state storage.
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The palm-sized Western Digital My Passport gives you the speed of an SSD in a pocket-friendly package, and even features built-in hardware encryption to keep your data safe.
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The Samsung 980 SSD is one of the best solid-state drives on the market, delivering great speeds and unbeaten reliability.
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Need a tough, portable SSD for less than 100 bones? This one offers high-speed storage on the go with a hard, shock-proof shell, speeds of up to 1,050MBps, and a modern USB-C port.
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This is a great price on any 1TB SSD, least of all on one that comes from an industry-leading name like Samsung.
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If you don’t want to pay extra for storage space you don’t need, the PNY Elite 240GB solid-state drive offers super-portable convenience and snappy USB 3.0 data transfer speeds.
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About as long and wide as a credit card (although obviously thicker), the fast and super-compact Samsung T5 external SSD is our favorite external hard drive thanks to its speed and size.
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At 512GB, the ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro is the ideal size for a solid-state system drive — and it’s available at the perfect price/performance sweet spot.
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If your needs are modest or you just want some cheap backup storage, This 128GB 2.5-inch internal SSD from PNY is about as cheap as they come.
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The SK Hynix Gold series is one of the best internal solid-state drives for the money thanks to its speed and reliability.
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Crucial has been offering some of the best (and most affordable) storage solutions for years, and the MX500 is a fantastic mid-sized internal SSD for the price.
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Western Digital has long been one of the gold-standard names in solid-state drives, and this deal lets you score a beefy TB SSD for less than a Benjamin.
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With this discount, the WD Blue SN550 is an M.2 internal SSD that’s priced similarly to traditional 2.5-inch hard drives.
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How to choose an SSD
Computer hardware keeps getting better, faster, and smaller, and recent advances in data storage technology have also been impressive (even if hard drives admittedly aren’t as exciting as CPUs and graphics cards). The introduction of solid-state drives, so-named due to their lack of moving parts in contrast to older hard drives which store data on rotating platters, has sparked a small revolution by offering fast and reliable storage that delivers far greater read/write speeds than the HDDs of yesteryear.
Solid-state drives store data on static chips in a fashion not dissimilar to USB flash drives. Standard internal SSDs typically follow the 2.5-inch form factor that has been used in laptops for a while now (in contrast to the bulkier 3.5-inch HDDs often found in desktop PC towers), and given the smaller size of solid-state drives and the fact they’re much cheaper than they once were, there are also plenty of portable USB external SSDs on the market today.
For internal SSDs, you have two form factors to consider: A more traditional 2.5-inch drive or an M.2 stick. The 2.5-inch SSDs have been commonly found in laptops for years, but M.2 SSDs are becoming more popular. M.2 SSDs look almost like sticks of RAM and slot directly onto a computer’s motherboard — no SATA cables necessary. Their smaller design makes them ideal for laptops, and many laptops now feature these drives (although desktop PC builders are also increasingly using them as well).
Solid-state drives provide several advantages over traditional platter-based hard drives, but there is one notable drawback: storage capacity. More specifically, SSDs are more expensive per gigabyte than HDDs, meaning you’ll pay more for a solid-state than you would for a similarly sized hard drive. That’s the basic trade-off for the SSD’s enhanced read/write speeds and reliability.
If you have more demanding storage needs, a cost-effective solution to this problem is to buy a smaller SSD for use as your system drive (your operating system and primary software will be installed here to take advantage of the faster speeds) and pairing it with a larger HDD for storing bigger files. Many laptops even come with both a solid-state system drive and a hard storage drive, and it goes without saying that you can easily do this with a desktop PC build as well.
Another thing you’ll want to consider when shopping around for SSD deals is the manufacturer’s warranty. Even without moving platters, SSDs are still active parts of your computer that are constantly reading and writing data, and while they’re typically more reliable than HDDs, they can still fail. That’s not something that any of us wants to happen (not least of all because it often involves losing saved work and other important data), but buying from a reputable brand that offers a good warranty is something that’s usually worth the little bit of extra money you’ll pay.
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