M.2 NVMe SSDs

Samsung’s 970 Evo Plus was an upgrade pick in a previous version of this guide, and it’s still a very good SSD from an established company; it also has a five-year warranty and a high, 600 TBW endurance rating (for the 500 GB version). It’s no longer a pick because budget NVMe SSDs have gotten so good and so cheap that most people don’t need to spend more to get better performance. The 500 GB version of the 970 Evo Plus is usually $30 or $40 more than any of our picks, and most of the time you wouldn’t notice a difference in use. The Seagate FireCuda 510 is in the same boat.

The Adata XPG SX8200 and the HP EX950 are solid budget SSDs that typically cost about the same amount as our picks, and they’re perfectly fine options especially if you find them on sale for less money. But the Seagate BarraCuda 510 is faster, the Addlink S70 has a better endurance rating, and no version of the SX8200 or EX950 supports hardware encryption acceleration.

The Crucial P1 is an older drive that’s much slower than the BarraCuda 510 but more expensive than the Western Digital WD Blue SN550. Its lack of drive-encryption support and relatively low 100 TBW endurance rating are other reasons not to buy it.

The Western Digital WD Black SN750 benchmarks similarly to the BarraCuda 510 and Addlink S70 and has the same five-year warranty and 300 TBW endurance rating. It costs a bit more and doesn’t have hardware encryption support; but if it’s on sale for less than our top picks, it’s a good alternative.

Samsung’s 970 Pro is usually overkill even for pros, and we recommend it only if you need the fastest drive money can buy. The 970 Pro uses multilevel cell (MLC) flash and doesn’t rely on TurboWrite or Dynamic Write Acceleration caches for speed, so it offers faster and more consistent performance if you’re writing tons of data at a time, and its endurance rating is twice has high as the 970 Evo’s (though both Samsung drives have the same five-year warranty). But you pay more for an MLC drive: A 512 GB 970 Pro costs around $50 more than the 512 GB 970 Evo, and a 1 TB Pro is $150 more expensive than the corresponding Evo.

The Samsung 970 Evo, Samsung 960 Pro, Samsung 960 Evo, Intel 760p, Intel 600p, Western Digital WD Black PCIe SSD with 3D NAND, SanDisk Extreme Pro M.2 NVMe 3D SSD, Corsair Force MP510, and Plextor M8Pe are all older models that are still readily available. They’re usually more expensive than (and sometimes slower than) our current picks, and generally you should avoid them in favor of more recent drives.

SATA and M.2 SATA SSDs

Gobs and gobs of 2.5-inch SATA SSDs are out there, and most of them have a hard time standing out from the crowd. Most are fine, and if you encounter a great deal on one of them, you won’t be unhappy. But at current prices, there’s little reason to consider them over our main picks.

Samsung’s 860 Evo is a SATA drive that performs a little better than the Crucial MX500 and has a higher 300 TBW endurance rating, but it’s more expensive than the MX500, and most people wouldn’t notice the performance difference. An mSATA version of the drive suitable for upgrading older laptops exists, but as of this writing it’s either out of stock or way overpriced on most retail sites.

If you do need an mSATA SSD, your options are limited, but Kingston’s SSDNOW UV500 has a five-year warranty, supports hardware encryption acceleration, and comes from an established company with a good reputation (most mSATA SSDs currently available from retailers are from no-name manufacturers). But because mSATA drives are more expensive than 2.5-inch SATA SSDs, you should buy an mSATA drive only if you have to.

Western Digital’s WD Blue 3D NAND and SanDisk’s Ultra 3D are identical drives—the only difference is the label on the front, and the fact that the WD Blue includes an M.2 version while the SanDisk comes in only a 2.5-inch SATA version. Both are well-reviewed, good-enough SATA SSDs with solid performance, and both are available for around the same price as the Crucial MX500. But their lack of hardware encryption support and their shorter, three-year warranty ultimately make the MX500 the better buy.

Samsung’s 860 Pro is a top-of-the-line SATA drive with high endurance and a five-year warranty, but at this point people who want a faster, better SSD than our main picks should be looking at NVMe SSDs, not SATA models. Drives like the Crucial MX500 and Samsung 860 Evo are significantly cheaper but not all that much slower.

Compared with the MX500, Crucial’s BX500 has slower performance, a shorter (three-year) warranty, and no hardware encryption support. It might be a good choice if you need an extremely cheap low-capacity drive—a 120 GB version costs less than $30—but the 480 GB version isn’t much cheaper than our top picks.

Samsung’s 860 QVO is meant to be a relatively cheap drive for people who need lots of space—it is available in 1 TB, 2 TB, and 4 TB capacities. It performs well, it’s cheaper than the 860 Evo, and it supports hardware encryption. But it has only a three-year warranty and isn’t any cheaper than the MX500 if you’re buying a 1 TB drive. There’s no reason to buy it unless you need something bigger than 1 TB but don’t want a spinning hard drive.

The SATA versions of Seagate’s BarraCuda SSD are competitively priced and have five-year warranties, but reviews indicate that they don’t perform quite as well or as consistently as our top picks. These SATA drives are not significantly cheaper than our main picks, and they have no hardware encryption support.

Adata’s Ultimate SU800, SanDisk’s Ultra II, and Mushkin’s Source SSDs are all good enough and readily available, but they run slower than our main picks, they have shorter, three-year warranties, and they lack encryption support.