SSD prices keep dropping. To the point of reaching parity with SSDs? It’s very likely, and it’s coming soon, according to a firm of experts in storage memories.
You probably noticed the phenomenon during the French Days which took place last week. The price of certain components is falling, that of SSDs in particular. On Amazon, for example, the Samsung 870 QVO MZ-77Q2T0B 2 TB internal SSD saw its price drop below €200 (-14% from €210 to €180). Crucial’s internal SSD references pass the same course, with reductions of up to 27% of their initial selling price (on this site anyway).
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According to Trendforce analysts, this downward trend should continue in the coming months. The price of flash memory, the mass memory that is the main component of SSDs and other memory cards, is currently only falling. As often, the reasons for the SSD price drop are multifactorial. The evolution of production techniques means that the manufacture of SSDs of lesser capacity, at 128 GB or 256 GB, costs more per gigabyte than “big” disks. Similarly, according to experts, a combination of overproduction of flash memory and declining demand would have automatically lowered prices. It’s no wonder that HDD sales keep dropping.
In 2023, a 2TB SSD will cost the same as an equivalent hard drive
This obviously does not please SSD manufacturers, who are seeing their margins shrink, which is very good news for consumers. According to Bryan Ao, analyst at TrendForce, in 2023, brands will offer SSDs in quadruple-level cells with a very interesting storage/price ratio. The markets (the United States at least) should be able to take advantage of 2TB SSD under $80 during Black Friday (from 2023).
It is at a capacity of 2 TB that the price of SSDs will reach that of conventional hard drives. HDDs will retain the advantage in mass storage (Seagate, for example, promises 100 TB hard drives by 2030). The offer in this area being less (and therefore more expensive) in SSD. That said, for capacities below 2 TB, the prices of these two technologies should very soon be identical. If the experts’ predictions were to come true, customers would have only one reason to continue buying hard drives: the environment. A recently published US study claims that SSDs have a carbon footprint twice as large as traditional hard drives. For the rest, whether we are talking about pure performance or durability, SSDs win hands down in the duel between them and hard drives.
Source: TechRadar