Samsung Cheapens SSDs for Netbook Market

The company's latest SATA II drives won't be the biggest or fastest, but Samsung hopes the price will be just right for portable device manufacturers.

With new Asus-Eee-style netbooks popping up every day, the market for small, cheap solid-state drives is booming, and Samsung is hopping in. Moving away from its prior emphasis on faster, larger drives for consumer applications, Samsung on Tuesday revealed a new line of inexpensive SATA II drives specifically tailored for miniature notebooks.

The drives will be 30 percent smaller than standard traditional 2.5-inch drives thanks to Samsung’s multi-level cell technology, the same wizardry it used to cut size and cost on its 128GB drives. Compared to Samsung’s latest offerings, which stretch up to 256GB, the drives will come in relatively small capacities of 32GB, 16GB, and 8GB. While all three will post read speeds of 90MB/s, write speeds will depend on size, with the largest drive offering the fastest specs: 70MB/s.  

“We’ve refined our manufacturing techniques and redesigned our low-density SSDs to get what the low-priced PC market is looking for in the way of improved cost, performance and availability,” said Jim Elliott, Samsung’s VP of memory marketing, in a statement.

Because the new drives are intended for OEM applications, Samsung released no prices with Tuesday’s announcement.