128 GB Solid State Drive Round-Up

Introduction

Looking for a 128 GB solid state drive (SSD) for your computer? Today we are going to compare the performance of seven different models from Corsair, Crucial, Kingston, Intel, Mushkin, Patriot and Western Digital. Which one you should buy? Check it out.

Before going on, we’d highly suggest you to read our Anatomy of SSD Units tutorial, which provides all background information you should know about SSDs. All units included in this round-up are based on MLC memory chips.

In the table below we compare the units we are going to review. All units use the 2.5" form factor and SATA-300 interface. The unit from Kingston is available in three versions: “desktop bundle,” “notebook bundle” and “stand-alone.” We received the “desktop bundle” model, which comes with an adapter to allow you to install the unit on a 3.5” hard disk drive bay, a peripheral-to-SATA power adapter and a SATA cable. The unit from Patriot (Torqx) also comes with a 3.5”-to-2.5” adapter.

Intel X25-M is an oddball with its 160 GB capacity instead of 128 GB. This "strange" number happens because the controller chip used on this particular SSD divides memory in 10 channels, each channel having 16 GB (thus 10 x 16 GB = 160 GB). We decided to include this unit in our review because we think this model fits better with a 128 GB round-up than with a 64 GB or 256 GB round-up.

Prices were researched at Newegg.com on the day we published this review, with the following observations:

• Crucial CT128M225 was out-of-stock. Its official list price at Newegg.com is USD 352 while the manufacturer suggested price is USD 400. We don’t know if Newegg.com will keep the huge discount when they restock this unit.
• Newegg.com offers a USD 25 mail-in rebate for Patriot Torqx, making this unit to cost USD 364 if you don’t forget to fill out the rebate card and ship it back.
• The price for the Kingston unit is for the “desktop budle” product, which comes with adapter for you to install it on a 3.5” hard disk drive bay. The stand-alone model (SNV425-S2/128GB) is sold by USD 260.

In the table below we provide a more in-depth technical overview of the reviewed units. For some reason most chip manufacturers don’t put on their websites specific information of these chips, so we are linking only what we found.