We’ve tested many hard drives of all types over the years, from premium to budget options. Therefore, we are here to help you find the most affordable SSDs for your storage needs. You’ll find plenty of options that don’t sacrifice performance in whatever budget range you’re looking for. Whether you’re looking for the latest PCIe M.2 SSD, an external SSD, or one that supports SATA, you’ll find something here that will work for you no matter what your storage needs are.
When solid state drives were first introduced, the best cheap SSDs did not exist. An SSD was expensive. These were premium upgrades for any computer system that had one. Fortunately, a lot has changed since then and today it is relatively easy to find solid state drives at reasonable prices. And they’re just as good as the more expensive ones from previous years, especially considering that SSDs are often heavily discounted during Black Friday and Cyber Monday seasonal sales events.
While there are also many expensive solid state drives on the market, cheaper SSDs can keep up in terms of performance, although they may not offer the same amount of storage. Still, if you’re on a budget and need more capacity, whether to store creative projects, your excess games, or all your work documents, you’ll find the solution to your storage woes here.
The best NVMe M.2 SSD deal
The Crucial P5 Plus is our pick for the best value SSD offering right now if you’re looking for the fastest NVMe storage possible. While it’s not the fastest product on the market, it’s easily the most competitively priced PCIe 4.0 option, meaning it supports the latest hardware in non-tech terms. It’s simply a fantastic option for all use cases, from gaming to creative applications, and a 5-year limited warranty will help future-proof your build.
Best cheap NVMe SSD deal
The Crucial P3 is the more budget-focused sibling of the P5 Plus and is even more value if you’re simply looking for a decent NVMe SSD on a budget. It’s PCIe 3.0, which means it won’t be as fast (it only has write speeds up to 3,500 MB/s), but it’s more than capable for basically any application. It’s also still much faster than the equivalent 2.5-inch SSD, which typically only offers speeds of around 500MB/S. Overall, this is a super solid drive that comes with many great value storage options, from 500MB up to 2TB.
Best 2.5-inch SSD deal
No list of the best SSDs seems to be complete without the Samsung 850 Evo, which consistently ranks near the top of the pack. While the 850 Evo is available as an M.2 and mSATA drive, it’s the standard 2.5-inch drive that proves time and time again to be an SSD you can’t go wrong with.
The 850 EVO comes in several different storage sizes, allowing you to choose the one that best fits your budget. With fast read and write speeds and reliable 3D NAND backed by a 5-year warranty, the 850 Evo is a great drive from a respected brand. Although the price may fluctuate a bit, now is a good time to purchase one, especially after the introduction of the Samsung 860 Evo.
Best cheap 2.5-inch SSD deal
The Crucial MX500 SSD offers incredible value and gives you a lot of storage per dollar. It comes in the standard 2.5-inch drive size, so it should fit in any standard desktop computer and many laptops as well.
Adding to the MX500’s great value is its great performance. Despite the budget price, the MX500 is built with fast, high-endurance 3D NAND flash storage, and comes with a 5-year warranty to back it up. Its speed of reading and writing data, both large and small, is also on par with the competition.
Best Laptop SSD Deal
Do you want to upgrade your laptop? SanDisk has the answer. The SanDisk Ultra II offers excellent value and performance per dollar, and with the standard 2.5-inch drive size and just 7mm thick, it should fit in a wide range of laptops.
The SanDisk Ultra II’s speeds are on par with its closest competitors, but at the 500GB sweet spot, it undercuts other drives on price. This makes it a good choice for upgrading a laptop. It comes with a 3-year warranty.
The best external SSD offer
Western Digital has an external SSD that is worth the money. While many other external SSDs warrant serious consideration of building your own external SSD by simply purchasing a regular SSD and USB enclosure separately, WD’s My Passport manages to offer a price that’s only slightly higher than an internal SSD of the same size. Plus, you won’t find a third-party enclosure smaller than the WD My Passport SSD.
Supporting USB-C and USB 3.1 Gen 2, the My Passport External SSD is capable of communicating quickly with a PC. It’s also small and lightweight, measuring just 1.8 x 3.5 x 0.39 inches and weighing 1.44 ounces. Of course, with portability comes the question of security, but My Passport includes 256-bit encryption to keep your data safe from intruders, and has been drop tested up to 6.5 feet to keep your data safe. of accidents.